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One Thousand Thoughts 

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FOR 

Memorial Addresses 


Illustrations, Poetical Selections, Texts, 
with Outlines and Suggestions 


Introdu&ion by 

RUSSELL H. CONWELL, D. D. 


HODDER & STOUGHTON 
NEW YORK 

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



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INTRODUCTION 


BY RUSSELL H. CONWELL. 


The seeds of the forest seem wasted when the land is al- 
ready overgrown. But the waste appears trivial compared 
with the loss of good thoughts and comforting messages which 
have been beautifully and thoughtfully expressed by the wise 
and good and which no kind friend of man has preserved. 

In this volume some of the most helpful ideas have been 
saved from oblivion and some of the best messages preserved 
for further use. Men are what they think: and he who fur- 
nishes mankind with inspiring thoughts is their noblest bene- 
factor. This book is a good deed. This collection of thoughts 
and sermons will help those who do the work of ministering 
angels, to do more of that work and do it better. We cannot 
do less than to express our gratitude to the compiler and the 
publisher. The seeds of blessing contained in this book have 
been transferred from the shade and rocks to the barren fields 
and planted where they are needed, and where they will find 
favorable environment to develop into the largest fruitage. 

What a sermon this volume is, as a whole, when we appre- 
ciate the exhortation it suggests to save and promulgate 
Christian ideas. How few are the manuscripts, books, in- 
scriptions recovered from the libraries and tombs of Babylon, 
Egypt and Greece! Oh, if we had the literary treasures of 
all the ages intact ! What an array of good deeds could have 
been shown today, if many had done what so few tried to do, 
and had preserved all the best compositions of all the great 
and good. 

We cannot hope to be original and creative in all directions, 
and the busy heart-loaded pastor has but little time to dig the 
ore for his plow or sword. David in distress needed Goliath's 
sword already forged and polished. He who preserved the 
sword and gave it to David seems entitled to love and honor 
with him who wielded it in defense of his country. Let us not 
give way to pride and say foolish things because they are 


our own. But it is wisest and most devotional to think of the 
mourner and the hopeless, and give to them the best things no 
matter who may seem to have uttered them first. One cannot 
avoid the thought that the authors of these sermons and ad- 
dresses will be glad even to know that the servants of Christ 
are using effectively still the messages they supposed would 
die with their delivery. They may feel grateful to those who 
renew the life and beauty of these children of their hearts. 

Of all the multiplied forms and places in which Christ ap- 
pears this volume shows him most emphatically as the Com- 
forter. This phase of his divine character can be most ef- 
fectively shown to the weeping, and can be studied and copied 
with the sincerest devotion. May these messages be “links 
in the chain which binds Earth to Heaven.” 



CONTENTS 


SECTION I 

ILLUSTRATIONS, POETIC SELECTIONS, OUTLINES. 

I. Death. (General) 1 

II. The Death of Children 25 

III. Death in Youth 49 

IV. Death in Maturity and Age — Parents 65 

V. Death of Persons of Prominence 105 

VI. Mysterious Providences. Sudden Death 137 

VII. Chastening — Affliction 159 

VIII. Resignation — Trust 197 

IX. Probation — Readiness for the Summons 239 

X. Resurrection — Immortality 265 

XI. Heaven 307 

XII . Other-worldliness — An Earnest Life 349 

XIII. Fragrant Lives — Influence 373 

XIV. The Deathbed 409 

XV. General Reflections on Life and Death 435 

SECTION II 

FUNERAL SERMONS AND ADDRESSES. 

I. General Reflections on Life and Death 469 

II. Death of the Young 485 

III. Death in Maturity and Old Age 495 

IV. Death of Persons of Note and Prominence 501 

V. The Other Life — Resurrection , Immortality , Heaven 522 

VI. Christian Comfort ; Confidence ; Resignation 549 


SECTION II 


FUNERAL SERMONS AND ADDRESSES 

Page 

“And he called a little child unto him” — Geo. Wolfe Shinn 487 

As a Tale that is Told— Jas. W. Fifield 469 

“Be ye also ready” — Lina J. Walk 482 

Christ and Childhood — Kerr Boyce Tupper 485 

Christianity a Religion of Comfort — Samuel Plantz 556 

Citizen and Philanthropist — Bp. Edwin H. Hughes 501 

Congressional Eulogies 514 

Congressman, Death of — W. J. Bryan 511 

Death Expressed in three Christian Phrases — G. W. Shinn 471 

Death no Stranger — J. W. Fifield 479 

Death, Thoughts on — J. Leonard Levy 478 

Editor, Death of a Noted 504 

Empty Grave, the — F. W. Krummacher 541 

Ever Open Arms of the Lord Jesus, the — Geo. Wolfe Shinn 488 

Experiences of a Redeemed Soul after Death — G. W. Shinn 546 

“For of such is the kingdom” — F. F. Rouse 493 

Future Light on Present Loss — Robert Forbes 489 

Glory of the Christian Religion — Wm. Patterson 524 

God Knows — God Pities 549 

Gone but not Forgotten — J. Leonard Levy 528 

Grave and the Garden, the — A. B. Meldrum 474 

“How old art thou?” — Geo. L. Robinson 472 

“If a man die, shall he live again?” — W. I. McLaughan 522 

“If a man die, shall he live again?” — Bp. Matthew Simpson 532 

Is there Another Life? — John Balcom Shaw 525 

Joseph Parker — in Memoriam — Sir W. R. Nicoll 502 

Living Dead, the — Myron W. Haynes 470 

Love and Death — Lyman Abbott 476 

Maiden, God’s Flower, the — Wm. Rainey Bennett 490 

Miracle of Divine Love — Edward E. Eaton 509 

Mother of D. L. Moody — D. L. Moody 496 

Mystery — Cyrus Medenhall 483 

“Now he is dead, wherefore should I fast?” — John Wesley 552 

Physician, Death of — Frederick T. Rouse 505 

Shall We Know Each Other there? — John Balcom Shaw 543 

“So He giveth his beloved sleep” — R. S. McArthur 560 

“The Lord hath taken away” — Joseph H. Chandler 554 

“The memory of the just is blessed” — S. Parkes Cadman 495 

“Then cometh the end” — C. A. Jessup 480 

Way Home, the — F. Dewitt Talmage 538 

“We know not what a day may bring forth” — Robert Forbes 481 

Wendell Phillips, Death of — Joseph Cook 507 

What a Christian Carries into the next World — Victor Frank Brown. 499 

What Faith Makes of Death — Alexander Maclaren 535 

“Who hath abolished death” — Horace Bushnell 550 

Worker, a Prominent Religious 510 

Young Girl’s Death, a — Henry Ward Beecher 491 


PUBLISHER’S FOREWORD 


The Funeral Service is the most trying duty of the pastor. 
To the sorrowing friends there is no loss so great as theii 
loss. If the pastor's address does not appreciate this, and if 
he does not pour oil into the wounds, he has failed them at 
the most critical time. 

With from ten to twenty or thirty funerals each year, he 
needs to watch against treating them as something common. 
He therefore needs all the help and suggestions that he finds 
in preparing his regular sermons. 

The choice thoughts and especially the Poetical Quotations 
will be treasured in the hearts of the bereaved for years. 
There will be requests for the pastor to write out copies of 
them. 

He will be repaid for his efforts of preparation in this min- 
istry of comfort, by remarks like these: 

“I will always remember Rev. . His remarks at 

John's funeral were so beautiful.'' “It seemed as if I could 
not live through my loss, but the poem quoted by our pastor 
gave me a new hope." 

That this volume will meet all the needs and requirements 
of these trying services is the expectation of the publisher. 
For the co-operation of leading pastors in furnishing copies 
of addresses the publisher is thankful, and the readers will 
appreciate the service. 



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SECTION ONE. 

I. DEATH— GENERAL. 


REFLECTIONS AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 

Life, Death, and Love (1). 

A woman lay with closed eyes and quiet breath waiting to welcome 
an angel whose presence seemed to overshadow the white-curtained room. 
A man knelt beside the bed, the woman’s hand pressed close against his 
cheek, while his lips moved as if in prayer. 

In the room were Life, Death, and Love. 

“What have you given her?” questioned Death of Life. 

“I brought her my best gifts,” answered Life; “youth, health, beauty, 
joy — and love.” 

“Has Love brought her good gifts?” again asked Death. 

Said Love with wistful eyes: “I brought her brave, bright hours, sun- 
shine and laughter, happiness and glory in living and then a heavy cross. 
The sunshine she shed about her, even with the fading of Life’s glory; 
the cross hidden deep in her soul cast out self and made a new radiance 
and beauty there.” 

“Let her come to me,” said Death. “Life had much to give, but peace 
and rest are not for Life to bestow. Love would give all, but must reck- 
on with the human heart. I will crown and glorify and bless her.” 

Life fled from the quiet room with a sigh and one whispered, tender 
word; but Love lingered, brave even in the full presence of Death. 

“What of him?” said Love, pointing to the kneeling figure. 

“He made the cross?” Death asked. 

“Yes,” said Love weeping. 

“We must teach him,” said Death, “what he could not learn from 
Life.”— The Outlook. 


Intertwined Lives (2). 

Man builds his life into the tools, the arts, the achievements of 
his city, until our earth becomes very dear. When that Grecian traveler 
landed on the Enchanted Islands and pulled the bough from the myrtle 
tree he heard a cry of pain and saw a branch exuding blood; and so 
closely is man’s heart entangled in friendships and homes and industries 
that when Death lifts a violent hand the soul cries out and the heart 
bleeds through mutilation. 

Death Touches Only the Body (3). 

■ 

In proportion as the body falls into ruin, the spirit is disengaged; 
like a pure and brilliant flame, which ascends and shines forth with 
additional splendor in proportion as it disengages itself from the re- 
mains of matter which held it down, and as the substance to which it 
was attached is consumed and dissipated. — Massillon, 


2 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


Death Not Frightful (4). 

It is a great thing to leave this world, and yet I cannot think it a 
specially frightful thing. True, we make a plunge into the unknown, 
which is so far appalling, and yet even that is somewhat of a fiction. We 
do know a great deal about the matter after all. We know Christ, 
which is to know pretty much everything; we know what He is and 
can be to us, so that if we knew all about the city and the river and all 
the paradisiac figures it would not add much to our knowledge. It comes 
indeed to this, that our plunge into the unknown is plunging into a sea 
of knowledge — the same we have been sailing in before, only in a coasting 
way. May God be with you and help you to be lifting your sail gladly. — 
Horace Bushnell. 

Dismantled (5). 

An old business block is being taken down, just across the street 
from where we sit. It was built many years ago. It has been the home 
and headquarters for many a flourishing business. It has had a long and 
varied career. Now it is in ruins. Some one might croak out a complaint 
that buildings might as well not be put up, if they are to come to such 
an end as this. He might ask the use in erecting a block if it is to be 
turned over to a wrecking company to be destroyed. But there is much 
use in it. That building has sheltered many shiploads of merchandise. 
The proprietors have sustained their families for half a century from the 
profits of the business carried on here, and thousands of families have 
found here what they needed in their homes. There has been a great 
deal of reason why the old building should exist. A better building is to 
rise. It will be twice as high as the old one, much more attractive and 
convenient and sturdy. It will shelter a larger business than the old 
one ever did. It will occupy the ground to much better advantage. It 
will be better adapted to the needs of modern life and business, and 
will correspond with its present surroundings much better than the 
shabby building did in the old age. 

So it is to be with the children of God. We are to lay aside the flesh 
and bones of this earthly body, but we are to have a better, more excel- 
lent, more appropriate and better conditioned body in days to come. 
We are not to be wrecked and ruined by death. We are not to be stripped 
and left homeless and unsheltered. We are not to be unclothed, but we 
are to have new and better clothing. We are not to be homeless, but are 
to have a better and nobler mansion in which to live. We are not to be 
turned out into the void and dreary space, without a habitation, but are to 
rejoice in the cheer and comfort of the new home, into which our souls 
will be tenanted as they leave this. — Selected. 

The Fear of Death (6). 

The fear of death, which has been so enormously exploited in dra- 
matic literature, sacred and otherwise, is said to be almost without ex- 
istence in sickness. Most patients have lost it completely by the time 
they become seriously ill. 

Death and sleep are both painless, according to Dr. Woods Hutchin- 
son, and cause neither fear nor anxiety by their approach. It is one of the 


DEATH— GENERAL. 


3 


most merciful things in nature that the overwhelming majority of the 
poisons which destroy life, whether they are those of infectious diseases 
or those which are elaborated from the body's own waste products, act 
as narcotics and abolish consciousness long before the end. 

Familiarity With Death (7). 

Familiarity with death is apt to alter one’s conceptions of it. Two 
ideas are very generally accepted which experience shows to be false. 
One is that the dying usually fear death, and the other, that the act of 
dying is accompanied by pain. It is well known to all physicians that 
when death is near its terrors do not seem to be felt by the patient. 
Unless the imagination is stimulated by the frightful portrayal of the 
supposed “pangs of death,” or of*the sufferings which some believe the 
soul must endure after dissolution, it is rare indeed that the last days 
or hours of life are passed in dread. 

Oliver Wendell Holmes has recorded his protest against the custom 
of telling a person who does not actually ask to know that he cannot re- 
cover. As that loving observer of mankind asserts, so must every one 
who knows whereof he speaks assert, that people almost always come to 
understand that recovery is impossible; it is rarely needful to tell any 
one that this is the case. When nature gives the warning death appears 
to be as little feared as sleep. 

Most sick persons are very, very tired; sleep — long, quiet sleep — is 
what they want. I have seen many people die. I have never seen one 
who seemed to fear death, except when it was, or seemed to be, rather far 
away. Even those who are constantly haunted, while strong and well 
with a dread of the end of life forget their fear when that end is at 
hand. — Selected. 


Then Cometh the End (8). 

We are going to be through this life before very long. The longest 
life is short when it is over; any time is short when it is done. The 
gates of time will swing to behind you before long; they will swing to 
behind some of us soon, but behind all of us before long. And then 
the important thing will be . . . not what men thought of us, but 
what He thought of us, and whether we were built into His king- 
dom. And if, at the end of it all, we emerge from life’s work and 
discipline crowned souls, at home anywhere in God’s universe, life will 
be a success. — Borden P. Bowne. 

Familiarity With Death (10). 

At one end of the city of Algiers is the large Arab cemetery. 
Every one goes to see it, and if the visitors are ladies they choose 
Friday as the time, as on that day — the Mohammedan Sabbath — the 
natives would flock to the cemetery in a body, dressed in their gayest 
and best, and unveiled, to picnic among the graves of their friends. 

Death a Phase of Life (11). 

The experience that comes when one who is nearest and dearest to 
us passes on into the unseen world is strangely significant. We at once 
realize that death is not the end of life, but merely one phase of exper- 


4 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


ience in life, and its nature is to uplift and purify the friend left on this 
side, and to offer its absolute testimony to the persistence of the com- 
munion between the two — the one still an inhabitant of the visible world, 
the other of the unseen world. He who has gone on to the life just beyond 
is as real a personality as ever. — L. Whiting. 

Death the End of Earth-life (12). 

Mr. Ruskin, writing on the robin, says: “It takes a worm by one 
extremity in its beak, and beats it on the ground until the inner part 
comes away. Then seizing it in a similar manner by the other end, it 
entirely cleanses the outer part, which alone it eats. One’s first impres- 
sion is that this must be a singularly unpleasant operation for the worm, 
however fastidiously delicate and exemplary in the robin. But I suppose 
the real meaning is, that as a worm lives by passing earth through its 
body, the robin merely compels it to quit this — not ill-gotten, indeed, but 
now quite unnecessary — wealth. We human creatures who have lived the 
life of worms, collecting dust, are severed by death in exactly the same 
manner.” 


Illusions (13). 

I know I am only repeating what we all believe — and all forget. It 
is never too late to preach commonplaces, until everybody acts on them 
as well as admits them — and this old familiar truth has not yet got so 
wrought into the structure of our lives that we can afford to say no more 
about it. 

“Surely every man walketh in a shadow.” Did you ever stand upon 
the shore on some day of that “uncertain weather, when gloom and glory 
meet together,” and notice how swiftly there went, racing over miles of 
billows, a darkening that quenched all the play of colors in the waves, 
as if all suddenly the angel of the waters had spread his broad wings 
between sun and sea, and then how, in another moment, as swiftly it 
flits away, and with a burst the light blazes out again, and leagues of 
ocean flash into green and violet and blue. So fleeting, so utterly per- 
ishable are our lives for all their seeming solid permanency. “Shadows in 
a career,” as George Herbert has it — breath going out of the nostrils. 
We think of ourselves as ever to continue in our present posture. We 
are deceived by illusions. Mental indolence, a secret dislike of the thought, 
and the impostures of sense, all conspire to make us blind to, or at least 
oblivious of, the plain fact which every beat of our pulses might preach, 
and the slow creeping hands of every parish clock confirm. How awful 
that silent, unceasing footfall of receding days is when once we begin to 
watch it! Inexorable, passionless. — Alexander Maclaren, D. D. 

Death Not the End (14). 

Our friends pass out of our sight, but they still are. The babe grows 
into the man, and the man grows into the saint, or may so grow. Imper- 
fection may shade over into beautiful perfection. Partial knowledge may 
“know even as we are known.” All rivers run to the sea. “To the sea 
of glass these mortal lives of ours do bend.” These forerunners of the 
end, — the halting gait, the trembling voice, the whitening locks, why weep 
over them, when there cometh the beginning on the other side, “the end- 


DEATH— GENERAL 


5 


lees beginning of the better chance?” We must not measure life by length 
of days. The soul is of more value than all the world. At the end the 
Christian falls to rise again. He is conqueror, though he die. He is 
kin to the ageless, deathless God. Is this a high hope? Be it so. It is 
the hope of the gospel of the Son of God. It is a hope that consecrates 
all present, perishing things, to the high purpose of the soul’s enrichment, 
and its fadeless life in heaven. If the sailor adds the steel of heroic en- 
durance to his tense muscles as he strains to reach the cottage where 
anxious hearts await his home-coming, shall not the Christian endure the 
discipline of all things if only he may reach his home in heaven? 

A Christian poetess, writing on the thought if she knew that she 
were to die tomorrow, says: 

“I might not sleep for awe; but peaceful, tender. 

My soul would lie 

All the night long; and when the morning splendor 
Flushed o’er the sky, 

I think that I could smile — could calmly say, 

It is his day.” 

To such a soul, death is not the end, but the beginning. — W. E. 
Fischer, D. D. 


Sober-minded (15). 

Death is a subject which may at present be remote from our thoughts, 
but it is an experience in which we shall all one day or other be inter- 
ested. To be frequently in the contemplation of death is perhaps the 
mark of a feeble rather than of a robust spirit, yet we ought not to refuse 
the calls which in God’s providence invite us to consider death. And, if 
it be extravagant to demand that a large part of our life should be con- 
sumed in contemplating its end, we may, like Nelson, while fighting on 
deck yet keep our coffin in our cabin. For it is a grosser and more dan- 
gerous blindness entirely to ignore our latter end than even to be too 
much absorbed in it. And indeed it is a fact, although a humiliating one, 
that it is to death we owe much of our interest in religion. This one 
benefit at least we derive from the grand enemy, that it compels us to 
question it, what it hides, what it commits to, what it means; whereas if 
life were continuous on earth and in the flesh we should feel it impos- 
sible to resist the temptation to find all our contentment, here and now, 
in what appeals to sense. But as one by one men are irrevocably sum- 
moned from earth even the most worldly are compelled to follow them 
with inquiry. Each man knows that the day is coming when for himself 
and by himself he must make trial of the vast unimaginable beyond. 
Suspended over the dark abyss he cannot but question what it contains, 
what forms of life may there exist. Shall we find there fellowship with 
an all-powerful and loving Spirit? Shall we find there a life continuous 
with the present, governed by the same moral ideas, fulfilling similar 
purposes? Or shall we be launched into we know not what chaos of 
hostile influences, and adverse and calamitous conditions, or at any rate 
into a life for which the present is no preparation? Is our conscious con- 
nection with things and persons forever broken when we cease to take 
part in this visible world? — Marcus Dods, D. D. 


6 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


Abolished Death (16). 

A writer in Fortnightly, under his leading thought, “The Dying of 
Death,” states as a general fact that death has ceased to act as a motive 
in life; and gives what he supposes to be the causes of a change in 
thought on the subject. The suggestion that death does not loom so 
largely in man’s thoughts as apparently it once did agrees with every 
one’s observation, and probably with nearly every one’s experience. The 
pulpit, quite as fully as the press, perhaps more so, is a mirror of public 
sentiment. It is always seeking for the strongest motive toward the re- 
ligious life, and employs the strongest considerations in its appeals. 
But there has come a change, the extent of which can only be realized by 
reading the religious books and the surviving sermons of a period so late 
as fifty years ago, and comparing them with the living sermons of today. 
One never now hears the once familiar descriptions of the terrors of 
physical death. On the contrary, both press and people seek to smooth 
over the great highway and beautify it with flowers. The funeral choir 
brings out its choicest voices. The officiating clergyman sums up the 
virtues of the departed. The press lends its aid, giving wings to the 
eulogium — and indeed there is nothing terror-inspiring left to the King 
of Terrors than can be eliminated. A funeral is now a beautiful specta- 
cle, filled with tenderness, reverence and beauty, and this pleasing im- 
pression is left upon the memory. — The Interior. 

The End of the Day (17). 

It was said by a great Dutch painter, the teacher of many pupils, 
that “the end of the day is the proof of the picture.” When all the little 
details are blotted out in the dusk, and you can see the perfect design 
of the artist, then you know whether he is an artist or not. And is it not 
the end of the day which is the proof of the picture in that painting at 
which we are all at work, the portrayal of our own personalities in our 
lifework? — D. Macfadyen. 

The End Near. (18) — A Monk near his end was heard to exclaim, “I 
care little for earthly things now; soon I shall travel among the stars.” 

“Swift To Its Close” (19). 

There is an hour, just after sunset, when all nature seems to be pre- 
paring for rest, when the heavens are telling, in the rich coloring of the 
dying day, the story of the great Light which never wanes! We watch 
the majesty of all this, and realize the swiftness with which our lives 
are ending. Then, oh then, the loved ones, absent from us, come into 
affectionate remembrance; and those, too, whom we have loved and lost 
awhile who rest in the peace of God, invoke our loving hopes and earnest 
prayers. — W. T. Parker, M. D. 

A Fixed Time (20). 

“I suppose you have your itinerary all mapped out, even to a day,” 
I said to a friend about making a long tour abroad. 

“No,” he replied, “that would spoil it all for me. I do not tie myself 
down to either places or times. I shall go and stay, and go and stay 
again, as the mood takes me.” 


DEATH— GENERAL 


7 


That, though, is something most tourists cannot do. There is a limit 
to the number of days they will have at their command. The sailing- 
dates are fixed for both going and coming. It is not from choice but 
from necessity that, having cut it short, what they take in and leave 
out, they “apply their hearts to the wisdom" of making the most they can 
of their sight-seeing days. — Ballard. 

Death, the Revealer. (21) — Life — We shall not know what life is until 
we die! Death is not a descent, but a never-ending ascent into the larger 
spaces and the fuller delights! — J. Ossian Davies. 

Does Death End All? (22). 

We feel no serious sadness over the fading of the grass and the 
leaves in autumn, for we know they will soon return, and the earth will 
appear with renewed beauty in the opening spring. It is very different 
in regard to man. He dies, and his place knows him no more. The 
question before us is not primarily, What is the purpose of life? but. 
Has life any purpose? The question is vital, for the answer inevitably 
shapes a man’s life. As we think in our heart, so we are. If the golf' 
player is startled to discover that the slightest mental distraction spoils 
his stroke, should it be hard to convince any man who is in earnest that 
it is necessary to think straight and reach conclusions if he will have 
his life run straight and true? — Stimson. 

The Unknown Tomorrow (23). 

There are the great changes which come to some one every day, 
which may come to any of us any day, which will come to all of us some 
day. Some of us will die this year; on a day in our new diaries some of 
us will make no entry, for we shall be gone. Some of us will be smitten 
down by illness; some of us will lose our dearest; some of us will lost 
fortune. Which of us it is to be, and where within these twelve months 
the blow is to fall, is mercifully hidden. The only thing that we cer- 
tainly know is that these arrows will fly. The thing we do not know is 
whose heart they will pierce. This makes the gaze into the darkness 
grave and solemn. There is ever something of dread in Hope’s blue 
eyes. True, the ministry of change is blessed and helpful; true, the dark- 
ness which hides the future is merciful, and needful if the present is not 
to be marred. But helpful and merciful as they are, they invest the un- 
known tomorrow with a solemn power which it is good, though sobering, 
for us to feel, and they silence on every lip but that of riot and fool- 
hardy debauchery the presumptuous words, “To-morrow shall be as this 
day, and much more abundant.” — Alexander Maclaren. 

Death’s Estimate of Life (24). 

When the great preacher, Massillon, preached the funeral sermon of 
Louis XIV., he made an immense impression with his first words. Slowly 
lifting his eyes, as he stood in the pulpit, he swept them in silence over 
all that magnificent funeral pomp. Then he fixed them on the lofty 
catafalque, where lay the body of the famous king. After a long silence 


8 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


he said, “My brethren, God alone is great.” It is a simple and thrilling 
truth that when life is gone, nothing that life possessed is worth anything 
at all. 


Death's Shadows Flee Before Eternity’s Light (25). 

To the lover of the Lord, the true morning comes when this taber- 
nacle is laid down. 

For when the last shadows gather, when our feet touch that cold 
dividing stream from which the bravest for the moment shrinks, when we 
stand on the verge of that darkness which to the unbeliever is dark in- 
deed, it may affect us with a momentary shiver, though often there is 
not even that. Yet for us it will be only that deeper darkness which 
they say comes just before the dawn. A moment, and then there will be 
the glory shining on the hills of God, and the light which no more goes 
down. We shall know all that we have waited and hoped for, all that 
we have prayed and longed to know. The riddles of life will be solved. 
The darkest things will open out and show us Divine love at the center. 
The mystery of God will have no more hiding in it. We shall see Him 
as He sees us, and doubt and pain and fear will flee away. — Greenburgh. 

Death’s Swift Approach (26). 

No man can look upon a field of corn, in its yellow ripeness, which 
he has passed weeks before when it was green, or a convolvulus wither- 
ing as soon as plucked, without experiencing a chastened feeling of the 
fleetingness of all earthly things. 

No man ever went through a night-watch in the bivouac when the 
distant hum of men and the random shot fired told of possible death on 
the morrow; or watched in a sick-room, when time was measured by the 
sufferer’s breathing, or the intolerable ticking of the clock, without a 
firmer grasp on the realities of Life and Time. 

So God walks His appointed rounds through the year: and every 
season and every sound has a special voice for the varying phases of our 
manifold existence. Spring comes, when earth unbosoms her mighty 
heart to God, and anthems of gratitude seem to ascend from every cre- 
ated thing. It is something deeper than an arbitrary connection which 
compels us to liken this to the thought of human youth. 

And then comes Summer, with its full stationariness, its noontide 
heat, its dust, and toil, an emblem of ripe manhood. The interests of 
youth are gone by. The interest of a near grave has not yet come. Its 
duty is work. And afterwards Autumn, with its mournfulness, its pleas- 
ant melancholy, tells us of coming rest and quiet calm. 

And now has come Winter again. 

It is not a mere preacher’s voice performing an allotted task. The 
call and correspondence are real. The young have felt the melancholy 
of the autumnal months. With a transient feeling — even amounting to a 
luxury — the prophetic soul within us anticipates with sentiment the real 
gloom of later life, and enables us to sympathize with what we have not 
yet experienced. The old have felt it as no mere romance — an awful 


DEATH— GENERAL 


9 


fact — a correspondence between the world without and the world within. 
We have all felt it in the damp mist, in the slanting shadows, the dimmer 
skies. — P. W. Robertson. 

Life Is Fleeting (27). 

Bubbles are supposed to burst almost as suddenly as they are 
blown; but rosin bubbles are exceptional. Of a pleasing appearance, 
silvery luster, and reflecting different rays of light, they will remain for 
months, it is said, as perfect as when they were formed. Their perma- 
nency is ascribed to the sudden coagulation of the rosin, thus imprison- 
ing the air by a thin film of solid matter and preventing its escape. 

Among youth particularly, how much building of air-castles! John 
Quincy Adams speaks of “the vain and foolish exultation of the heart 
which the brighter prospects of life will sometimes excite.” Some of 
these things, however, seem to have considerable substance in them, and 
hold their fascination during most or all of the natural life. Many great 
men otherwise have resembled rosin bubbles in their solid success, but 
in the failure to prepare for another existence it was only bubbles after 
all, however apparently substantial. The butterfly wing is gaudy and 
evanescent, though lasting through the long summer’s day. Says Paul, 
“Seek those things which are above, not the things on the earth.” (Col. 
3:1.) — Homiletic Review. 

The Entrance to a Richer Life (28). 

Dying is only a process in which we pass into larger, fuller, richer 
life. This body (the flesh) which was assumed by our Lord Jesus Christ, 
dwelt in by His life, purified by His purity, transfigured with Him on the 
Mount of Transfiguration, consecrated forever in His sacrifice on the 
Cross, will then be viewed in all the blessedness and perfection of its 
divine character. This perfect work, attested in the resurrection of 
“Christ the first fruits,” will be completed in those who are Christ’s at 
His coming, when “death shall be swallowed up in victory.” “And there 
shall be no more death, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying nor 
pain any more.” “Thanks be to God who giveth us the victory through 
our Lord Jesus Christ.” He is risen! Therefore all that He said is true. 
He is risen! Therefore He is the Son of God. He is risen! Therefore 
He lives to fulfill His promises. He is risen! Therefore the grave is 
robbed of its victory. He is risen! Therefore we shall rise again. 
We close our eyes in peace to open them without an interval or a 
break of what we can be aware, in the gladness and fullness of the 
everlasting morning. We shall find in the heavenly land the dear ones 
from whom we hav© been separated; we shall know them, they will 
know us, and we shall enter upon a life of service there, if we have 
had a life of service here. — The Christian Intelligence. 

The Naturalness of Death (29). 

When a man’s work is done, death is as natural and as beautiful as 
the falling leaves of autumn. All of us are wise enough to see that. I 
sometimes think that no more merciful death could have been chosen for 
that noble brother of ours, Abraham Lincoln, than the swift bullet which 
brought instant oblivion to his deadly weariness. His work was done. 


10 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


It had been a Titan’s task. Strong and brave and tender and loving be 
bad held himself through it all. Worn and weary, deadly weary, he was. 
Then, in an instant, the burden was dropped, rest came, the soul passed 
on to his God and our God to serve in what other spheres we know not, 
and the poor, tired, worn-out body was laid to rest. Is this condoning 
the deed of the assassin? By no means. It is recognizing that the pur- 
poses of the Eternal Goodness are worked out through the follies and 
mistakes of men. — Rev. E. G. Brown. 

The Fact of Death (30). 

It is a remarkable change, when we come to think of it, which at 
death passes at once on the material and the immaterial part of the 
nature of man. The soul is separated from its mortal tenement; and that 
spiritual existence, whose warm affections we vainly referred to the ma- 
terial heart, and whose thoughts and fancies we vainly referred to the 
material brain, now lives apart from both, and independent of either. 
But the soul was always a mystery; it was invisible before, and it is no 
more now; we cannot tell how it left the body, but we never knew how it 
lived in it, or where in this mortal framework was its home; and its de- 
parture is no more inexplicable than its existence. It is on the more fa- 
miliar body, that the more palpable and the more affecting change is 
wrought. The contrast with that which a little before it was, strikes us 
painfully and harshly; and an undefined and mysterious awe comes 
over us, as we stand by the body from which the soul has gone. The 
heart is there, but it beats no longer; the eye, but it sees no more; and 
the kindliest and best-loved voice cannot arrest the attention of the dull, 
cold ear. The color of life has fled from the cheek, and the light of in- 
tellect from the brow; the multitudinous machinery of animal life is 
there, but the vital spark to set it in motion is wanting; and when weep- 
ing friends stand round the bed of death, that, which once could never 
see their grief without seeking to soothe and lighten it, is now wholly 
unresponsive. — Boyd. 


ILLUSTRATIVE POETRY. 

And Then Comes Night (31). 

Life is a leaf of paper white 
Whereon each one of us may write 
His word or two, and then comes night. 

— LowelL 


Two Views of Death (32). 

While man is growing, life is in decrease, 
And cradles rock us nearer to the tomb; 
Our birth is nothing but our death begun. 
As tapers waste, that instant they take fire. 

* * * 

While we are dying, life is on increase. 
The sun is rising on sepulchral gloom, 


DEATH— GENERAL 


11 


Our death is nothing but our life begun; 

The hour of birth is when the saints expire. 

— Young’s Night Thoughts. 

The Veil (33). 

“Slight as thou art, thou art enough to hide, 

Like all created things, secrets from me. 

And stand a barrier to eternity. 

And I, how can I praise thee well and wide 
From where I dwell upon the hither side. 

Thou little veil for so great mystery? 

When shall I penetrate all things and thee 
And then look back? For this I must abide, 

Till thou shalt grow and fold and be unfurled 
Literally between me and the world. 

Then I shall drink within beneath a spring 
And from a poet’s side shall read his book. 

Oh! daisy mine, what will it be to look 
From God’s side even of such a simple thing?” 

— Alice Meynell. 

How Still He Lieth (34). 

How still he lieth in his narrow bed! 

The marks of rugged toil are on his face 
And hands, folded so calmly in their place 
Upon his quiet heart: the years have fled 
And left a silver aureole on his head; 

The lines of age are smoothed away, and now 
The look of youth returning crowns his brow. 

How peacefully he sleeps with naught of dread 
That he must wake and hurry to his toil! 

No fears of coming ill disturb his rest, 

Nor tho’ts of sorrow o’er his spirit sweep. 

They lay him tenderly beneath the soil 
And gently press the sods upon his breast, 

For lo! He giveth His beloved sleep! 

— Frederick E. Snow. 

Death (35). 

I was ever a fighter, so — one fight more 
The best and the last! 

I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forebore 
And bade me creep past. 

No, let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers, 

The heroes of old, 

Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life’s arrears 
Of pain, darkness and cold. 

For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave, 

The black minute’s at end, 

And the elements rage, the fiend voices that rave. 


12 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


Shall dwindle, shall blend, 

Shall change, shall become first a peac6 out of pain. 
Then a light, then thy breast, 

O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again, 

And with God be the rest. 

— Browning. 


When Baby Died (36). 

How brief the stay, as beautiful as fleeting. 

The time that baby came with us to dwell: 

Just long enough to give a happy greeting, 

Just long enough to bid us all farewell. 

Death travels down the thickly settled highway, 
At shining marks they say he loves to aim; 

How did he find far down our lonely byway. 

Our little girl who died without a name? 

She seemed so like a tender bird whose winglets 
Are broken by the stress of rain and storm, 

With loving care we pressed the golden ringlets. 
And wondered could there be so fair a form; 

For death had chiseled without pause or falter 
Each feature that the sunny tresses frame: 

No change of scene nor length of time can alter 
Our little girl who died without a name. 

We do not know the fond endearment spoken 
To which she listened when she fell asleep. 

And so beside a column that was broken, 

We laid her to her slumber calm and deep; 

We traced upon the stone with loving fingers 
These simple words, affection’s tear to claim: 

“In dreams, beyond all earthly sorrow, lingers 
Our little girl who died without a name.” 

Close folded there within the Bible hidden, 

A flower fades that withered on her breast. 

Upon the page where such as she are bidden 
To seek the circle of His arms for rest. 

“Of such the kingdom,” comes to us so sweetly, 
Those little ones without a touch of blame; 

We know He shelters in His love completely, 

Our little girl who died without a name. 

She sleeps serene where fragrant mossy willows 
In sweet and wordless tunes forever wave, 

And summer seas in long and grassy billows 
Break into bloom around her lonely grave. 

In memory’s hall how many heroes slumber, 


DEATH— GENERAL 


13 


We gild their deeds upon the scroll of fame; 
[We treasure far above this mighty number. 

Our little girl who died without a name. 

— Alonzo Rice. 


Death's Real Terror (37). 

Could I have sung one song that should survive 
The singer’s voice, and in my country’s heart 
Find loving echo — evermore a part 
Of all her sweetest memories; could I give 
One great thought to the people, that should prove 
The spring of noble action in their hour 
Of darkness, or control their headlong power 
With the firm reins of justice and of love; 

Could I have traced one form that should express 
The sacred mystery that underlies 
All beauty, and through man’s enraptured eyes 
Teach him how beautiful is holiness, — 

I had not feared thee. But to yield my breath, 

Life’s purpose unfulfilled!— This is thy sting, O death! 

— Sir Noel Paton. 


Only a Few More Year# (38) 


A few more years shall roll, 

A few more seasons come. 

And we shall be with those that 
rest. 

Asleep within the tomb; 

Then, O my lord, prepare 
My soul for that great day; 

Oh, wash me in Thy precious 
Blood, 

And take my sins away. 

A few more suns shall set 
O’er these dark hills of time 
A.nd we shall be where suns are not, 
A far serener clime; 

Then, O my Lord, prepare 
My soul for that bright day; 

Oh, wash me in Thy precious 
Blood, 

And take my sins away. 


A few more storms shall beat 
On this wild rocky shore. 

And we shall be where tempests 
cease, 

And surges swell no more: 

Then, O my Lord, prepare 
My soul for that calm day; 

Oh, wash me in Thy precious 
Blood, 

And take my sins away. 

A few more struggles here, 

A few more partings o'er, 

A few more toils, a few more tears, 
And we shall weep no more: 
Then, O my Lord, prepare 
My soul for that blest day; 

Oh, wash me in Thy precious Blood, 
And take my sins away. 

— Bonar. 


Time (39). 

Forenoon and afternoon and night, 
Forenoon and afternoon and night, 
Forenoon and — what? 

The empty song repeats itself. 


14 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


Our Silences (40). 

What silences we keep, year after year! 

With those who are most near to us and dear! 

We live beside each other day by day 
And speak of myriad things, but seldom say 
The full, sweet word that lies just in our reach 
Beneath the commonplace of common speech. 

Then out of sight and out of reach they go — 

Those close, familiar friends who loved us so; 

And sitting in the shadow they have left. 

Alone with loneliness and sore bereft, 

We think with vain regret of some fond word 
That once we might have said and they have heard. 

For weak and poor the love that we express 
Now seems beside the vast, sweet unexpressed, 

And slight the deed we did to those undone, 

And small the service spent to treasures won, 

And undeserved the praise for word and deed 
That should have overflowed the simple need. 

This is the cruel cross of life, to be 
Full-visioned only when the ministry 
Of death has been fulfilled, and in the place 
Of some dear presence is but empty space. 

What recollected service e’er can then 
Give consolation for the might have been? 

— Selected. 


No Need For Fear (41). 

Why be afraid of Death as though your life were breath! 
Death but anoints your eyes with clay. O glad surprise! 

; J: ' • I «Vl • 

Why should you be forlorn? Death only husks the corn. 
Why should you fear to meet the thresher of the wheat? 

Is sleep a thing to dread? Yet, sleeping, you are dead, 
’Till you awake and rise, here or beyond the skies. 

Why should it be a wrench to leave your wooden bench? 
Why not with happy shout run home when school is out? 

The dear ones left behind! O foolish one and blind. 

A day and you will meet — a night, and you will greet! 

This is the death of Death, to breathe away a breath 
And know the end of strife, and taste the deathless life. 


DEATH— GENERAL 


15 


And joy without a fear, and smile without a tear, 

And work, nor care, nor rest, and find the last the best. 

— Selected. 


The Conquest of Death (42). 

The ship may sink and I may drink 
A hasty death in the bitter sea; 

But all that I leave in the ocean grave 

Can be slipped and spared, and no loss to me. 

What care I though falls the sky, 

And the shrivelling earth to a cinder turn? 

No fires of doom can ever consume 
What never was made nor meant to burn. 

Let go the breath! There is no death 
To the living soul, nor loss, nor harm. 

Not of the clod is the life of God: 

Let it mount, as it will, from form to form. 

Love (43). 

A mystic shape did move 

Behind, and drew me backward by the hair. 

And a voice said in mastery while I strove, 

“Guess now who holds thee!” — “Death,” I said; but there 
The silver answer rang, “Not Death, but Love.” 

The Thinning Ranks (44). 

The day grows lonelier; the air 
Is chillier than it used to be. 

We hear about us everywhere 
The haunting chords of memory. 

Dear faces once that made our joy, 

Have vanished from the sweet home band; 

Dear tasks that were our loved employ, 

Have dropped from out our loosened hand. 

Familiar names in childhood given 
None call us by, save those in heaven. 

We cannot talk with later friends 

Of those old times to which love lends 

Such mystic haze of soft regret; 

We would not, if we could, forget 

The sweetness of the bygone hours, 

So priceless are love’s faded flowers; 

But lonelier grows the waning day, 

And much we miss upon the way 

Our comrades who have heard the call 
That soon or late must summon all. 


16 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


Ah, well! the day grows lonelier here, 

Thank God, it doth not yet appear 
What thrill of perfect bliss awaits 
Those who pass on within the gates; 

O, dear ones who have left my side, 

And passed beyond the swelling tide, 

I know that you will meet me when 
I too shall leave these ranks of men 
And find the glorious company 
Of saints from sin forever free. 

Of angels who do always see 
The face of Christ, and ever stand 
Serene and strong at God’s right hand. 

The day grows lonelier, the air 
Hath waftings strangely keen and cold 
But woven in, O glad, O rare 
What love notes from the hills of gold! 

Dear crowding faces gathered there, 

Dear blessed tasks that wait our hand, 

What joy, what pleasure shall we share 
Safe gathered in the one home-land! 

Close up, O comrades, close the ranks; 

Press onward, waste no fleeing hours; 

Beyond the outworks, lo! the banks 
Of that full tide where life hath power, 

And Satan lieth underfoot, 

And sin is killed, even at the root. 

Close up, close fast the wavering line, 

Ye who are led by One divine. 

The day grows lonelier apace, 

But heaven shall be our trysting place. 

— Margaret E. Sangster in the Congregationalism 

Unreturning (45). 

Strange, is it not, that of the myriads 

Who before us passed the gate of darkness through. 

Not one returned to tell us of the way, 

[Which to discover we must travel to. 

Alone (46). 

Alone to land and upon that shore, 

Alone to begin to live forevermore; 

With no one to put us at our ease 
Or teach us the manner and the speech 
Of that new life. 

Oh, that we might die in pairs or companies! 


DEATH— GENERAL 


11 


The Hour of Death (47). 

Leaves have their time to fall 
And flowers to wither at the north-wind’s breath, 

And stars to set — but all, / 

Thou hast all seasons for thine own, O Death! 

Day is for mortal care. 

Eve for glad meetings round the Joyous hearth. 

Night for the dreams of sleep, the voice of prayer — 

But all for thee, thou mightiest of the earth. 

The banquet hath its hour, 

Its feverish hour of mirth, and song, and wine; 

There comes a day for grief’s o’erwhelming power, 

A time for softer tears — but all are thine. 

Youth and the opening rose 
May look like things too glorious for decay. 

And smile at thee — but thou are not of those 
That wait the ripened bloom to seize their prey. 

We know when moons shall wane. 

When summer birds from far shall cross the sea, 

When autumn’s hue shall tinge the golden grain — 

But who shall teach us when to look for thee? 

Is it when spring’s first gale 
Comes forth to whisper where the violets lie? 

Is it when roses in our paths grow pale? 

They have one season — all are ours to die! 

Thou art where billows foam. 

Thou art where music melts upon the air; 

Thou art around us in our peaceful home. 

And the world calls us forth — and thou art there. 

Thou art where friend meets friend. 

Beneath the shadow of the elm to rest — 

Thou art where foe meets foe, and trumpets rend 
The skies, and swords beat down the princely crest. 

Leaves have their time to fall, 

And flowers to wither at the north-wind’s breath. 

And stars to set — but all, 

Thou hast all seasons for thine own, O Death! 

— Felicia Hemans. 


18 THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 

TEXTS AND TREATMENT HINTS. 

Keeping the End In View. 

Lord, make me to know mine end, 

And the measure of my days, what it is; 

Let me know how frail I am. 

Behold, Thou hast made my days as handbreadths; 

And mine age is as nothing before Thee; 

Surely every man at his best estate is altogether vanity. 

— Ps. 39:4. 

1. Life is brief and death is near for all. 

2. By ignoring this fact, multitudes lose one of the mightiest motives to 

right living here and preparation for the hereafter. 

3. Our prayer should be that God would keep a keen realization of it 

ever before us. 

The Transitoriness of Life (48) 

“So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto 
wisdom.” — Ps. 90:12. 

This is the key-note of the 90th Psalm. It numbers sadly the days and 
vicissitudes of human life; but it does this, not for the sake of mere senti- 
ment, but rather for practical purposes, that it may furnish a motive for 
a wiser life of the heart. We know nothing of the Psalm except that it 
was the composition of “Moses, the man of God.” It was written evi- 
dently in the wilderness, after years of apparently fruitless wandering; 
its tone is that of deep sadness, — retrospective; its images are borrowed 
from the circumstances of the pilgrimage, — the mountain-flood, the grass, 
the night-watch of an army on the march. 

See here again what is meant by inspiration. Observe the peculiarly 
human character of this Psalm. Moses, “the man of God,” is commis- 
sioned not to tell truths superhuman, but truths emphatically human. 
The utterances of this Psalm are true to nature. Moses felt as we feel, 
only God gave him a voice to interpret, and he felt more deeply than all, 
what all in their measure feel. His inspiration lay not in this, that he 
was gifted with legislative wisdom; but rather in this, that his bosom 
vibrated truly and healthfully to every note of the still sad music of 
humanity. 

We will consider: 

I. The feeling suggested by a retrospect of the past. 

II. The right direction of those feelings. — Robertson. 

HIS DAYS AS GRASS. 

“As for man, his days are as grass; as a flower of the field, so he 
flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place 
thereof shall know it no more.” — Ps. 103:15-16. 

1. Our plans and expectations are all for permanency. We live and labor, 
and love and strive as though the years were endless. 


DEATH— GENERAL 


19! 


2. The facts of experience are all against ns. From infancy to old age, 

those about us are constantly receiving the final summons. 

3. Wisdom would lead us to recognize^and act upon this fact. 

THE FEAR OF DEATH CONQUERED. 

Perfect Love Casteth Out Fear. — 1 John 4:18 (49). 

I. Is not the bondage to the fear of death the one heavy burden of 
life? I do not mean that the fear of our own individual death is a con- 
stantly present fear. It may but seldom occur consciously to the mind. 
But though the prospect and the thought be banished, the bondage abides 
still. The hunger of a soul is felt, though the attention be distracted 
from its existence. A life occupied only upon the things which perish 
feels resting heavily upon it a burden; and that burden is the bondage to 
the fear of death. The weariness of a worldly life is in part bodily and 
mental fatigue, but it is more than this: it is the protest of a spirit which 
was meant for other things. To have forgotten death, to have put it out 
of sight, out of our reckoning, is itself the completest death. The enemy 
is not to be conquered by closing the eyes upon him. He is the conqueror, 
who is only to be cast out by another conqueror. 

II. St. John in our text declares that fear has a conqueror’s power; 
it can inflict torment. It is a power which requires another stronger 
power to exorcise it. This power of grace is “perfect love.” In this 
Epistle St. John does not speak vaguely and sentimentally about love. 
He connects it directly with God’s goodness to us, and with our duties 
as children of the Father. And as love grows, fear, the fear that has 
torment — the fear, that is, of finding Him a God of hate in the next world 
whom we have found, by blessed experience, to be a God of love in this 
— becomes no longer tenable. It is forced out of the soul by the spread- 
ing roots of affection and trust, for while it abides it is the lingering 
shadow of unfaithfulness. Love is not the grace which has made obe- 
dience superfluous; it is a feeling which, like Aaron’s serpent, has swal- 
lowed up all the rest, which has taken up into itself, absorbed, duty and 
obedience, as unconscious and spontaneous offerings of the will. — Rev. 
A. Ainger. 


“We All Do Fade as a Leaf” (50). 

“Probably not one person in a thousand knows why leaves change 
their color in the fall,” an eminent botanist is quoted as saying. “The 
common and old-fashioned idea is that all this red and golden glory we 
see now is caused by frosts. A true and scientific explanation of the 
causes of the coloring of leaves would necessitate a long and intricate 
discussion. Stated briefly and in proper language, those causes are these: 
the green matter in the tissue of a leaf Is composed of two colors, red and 
blue. When the sap ceases to flow in the fall, and the natural growth 
of the tree ceases, oxidation of the tissue takes place. Under certain 
conditions the green of the leaf changes to red; under different conditions 
it takes on a yellow or brown tint. The difference in color is due to the 
difference in combination of the original constituents of the green tissue 
and to the varying conditions of climate, exposure, and soil. A dry, cold 


20 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


climate produces more brilliant foliage than one that is damp and warm. 
This is the reason that American autumns are so much more gorgeous 
than those of England. There are several things about leaves that even 
science cannot explain. For instance, why one of two trees growing side 
by side, of the same age and having the same exposure, should take on 
a brilliant red in the fall and the other should turn yellow; or why one 
branch of a tree should be highly colored, and the rest of the tree have 
only a yellow tint, are questions that are as impossible to answer as why 
one member of a family should be perfectly healthy and another sickly. 
Maples and oaks have the brightest colors. — Selected. 

“One Taken and the Other Left.” (51). 

The separation made by death is always a solemn thing. I. How It 
would sweeten the parting if each were assured of the other's faith! 
II. How different many a leave-taking would be, if both knew that it was 
only for a little while, and that the reunion would be everlasting! III. 
How blessed for mourners left in tears to know assuredly that those who 
are gone have only departed “to be with Christ!” and this bright assur- 
ance may be the comfort of all whose friends gave evidence, ere they fell 
asleep, that they had really been “living by faith in the Son of God, Who 
Loved them and gave Himself for them.” — Knight. 

“The Night Cometh.”— John 9:4 (52). 

When I turned my calendar to a new page, on the first of the month, 
I read this: “Life is but once. We shall never pass this way again. 
Drink the cup, wear the roses, live the verses.” “Drink the cup,” — that 
means when hard experiences come to us, when we feel bowed down with 
the weight of cares and responsibilities, when we are crushed by a sense 
of our own inadequacy, accept it all sweetl. as a part of the inevitable. 
Don’t reluct at it; don’t go off into a corner and think, “I am more un- 
fortunate than ever anybody was;” don’t entertain the thought of the 
hardness and somberness of life, but face what you must face, it may be 
with smiles or it may be with tears, but face it in a brave and lofty 
spirit. Face the clouds without forgetting the sunshine. Accept the 
darkness of the night without forgetting the eternal stars. So Socrates 
drank the fatal hemlock, so we shall drink the cup of experience put to 
our lips, in a way that shall bear witness to the superiority of the life 
within to the steady burning within of the fire of a courageous heart and 
a sweet and gentle soul. “Wear the roses,” appreciate the good in life, 
seek the bright and the beautiful whether in outward nature or in human 
nature, — they are there waiting for us to catch the inspiration and the 
good cheer they bring. “Wear the roses,” — not only on our external per- 
sons and in our drawing-rooms, but in our minds and our hearts, in the 
daily conduct of our lives. Beauty wherever found should make us beau- 
tiful within. Sunshine and blue sky should find their reflection within. 
Truth and goodness, as personified in others, should touch us in the 
depth of our natures to make us clean, and pure and good, too. Cultivate 
an appreciation for what is helpful and inspiring in the world about us, 
in the people we meet every day, and let it have an uplifting and refin- 
ing influence in our ow£ lives. Take the joys of life holily. Wear all the 


DEATH— GENERAL 


21 


roses of personal character in others, in character blossoming more beau- 
tifully in ourselves. What a wonderful thing life becomes when we can 
think of it as opportunity to seek and find what is best everywhere! We 
must cultivate our taste for what is best, and then, if we walk in the 
fields, we shall find it. If we wander up and down the streams, we shall 
find it. If we sail the seas, we shall find it. Wherever we cultivate the 
acquaintance of external nature, we shall find it. And the same thing is 
true of our association with people. Look for the good things, the happy 
things, the noble things, the roses of life in humanity; and, almost before 
you know it, they will have influenced you, and you will be wearing 
them in your inmost consciousness. “Live the verses,” — make life rhyth- 
mical, make it a harmony, make it a poem. Is that hard to do? All 
the same, try to do it, and keep on trying. Rhythm in life, — we know 
it in the soughing of the pines; we know it in the flag as it yields gently 
to the persuasion of the breeze; we know it in music, music composed 
by gifted souls, and interpreted to us by instrument and voice; we know 
it in the songs which poets have sung; we need to know it in ourselves. 
We are writing a poem, we are composing a symphony, — at least we are 
set to do that in our own characters. What a different thing it makes 
of this career of ours, in space and time if we can keep the fires of the 
poetic, the rhythmic and musical, the fires of the ideal, burning within. 
It is a great thing to write the verses, it is a great thing to sing them, 
it is a great thing to live them. Did it ever occur to you that this whole 
universe of ours is set to music? Did it ever occur to you that all human 
life ultimates in harmony, — discords everywhere, but finally the building 
up out of them of the universal human symphony from the hands of the 
Infinite Composer? Why should not you and I out of the discords of our 
own lives bring to pass the harmony of a rhythmic character? What 
Tennyson has done, what Browning and all the poets have done, what 
Beethoven and Wagner and their fellows have done in great ways, that 
we are to do in our little ways. — Rev. Frederick A. Hinckley in The 
Christian Register. 

“God Took Him.”— Gen. 5:24 (53). 

There are many ways of passing from one state of existence to an- 
other. Look at the case of Enoch, concerning whom we simply read, 
“He was not, for God took him.” We do not know how the process 
was conducted. Whoever saw the evaporation of a dewdrop? Whoever 
saw the exact moment when the flower came up into visibleness? Take 
the case of Elijah concerning who we read, “He was carried up.” We 
think of the chariot of flame and of attendant angels. Imagination pic- 
tures a vivid scene of transport. In the case of Enoch there was simply 
abstraction, in the case of Elijah there was pompous, glorious visibility 
and triumph. Take the case of Paul, concerning whom we read that his 
life was “poured out.” He was ready to be offered as a libation. His 
death was a kind of offering or sacrifice unto God. Take the case of 
Christ Himself, concerning whom we read that “He laid down His life.” 
No man took the life from Him, else had His death been a mere murder; 
He laid it down of Himself, and thus His death became a sacrifice and 
an atonement. Group all these instances and see in what various ways 


22 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


God takes His children to Himself: “God took him.” “He was carried 
up;” “He was poured out;” “He laid down his life.” As to the glorious 
Christ we simply read that “He rose” and that “He went away.” Christ 
never asked to he prayed for. Christ worked with the resources of 
boundless power. Jesus gives, not receives; Jesus sends, but is not sent. 
In these distinctions, so exquisite, yet so palpable, I find the best illus- 
trations of the deity of my Lord. — Joseph Parker. 

“Then Shall the End Come Matt. 24:14 (54). 

The Certain End. 

It is not possible to rule these words out of life. They are perpetu- 
ally recurring. You tell of any process, you trace out how it is going to 
work on from step to step, you see how cause opens into effect, and then 
effect, becoming cause, opens into still further effect beyond; but always, 
by-and-by, your thought comes to a stoppage and a change. The process 
is exhausted. “Then cometh the end.” Your story has to round itself 
to that. 

Let us think of this characteristic of life, and see what it means. 

I. We may begin by noting this — which is the most striking thing 
about the whole matter — the way in which men’s desire and men’s 
dread are both called out by this constant coming of the end of things. 
Look (1) at man’s desire of the end. It is, in the most superficial aspect 
of it, a part of his dread monotony. There is something very pathetic, 
it seems to me, in man’s instinctive fear of being wearied with even the 
most delightful and satisfactory of all the experiences which he meets 
with in the world. Is it not a sign, one of the many signs, of man’s 
sense that his nature is made for larger worlds than this, and only abides 
here temporarily and in education for destinies which shall be worthy 
of its capacities? “I would not live alway” has been a true cry of the 
human soul. (2) But this is the most superficial aspect of it. Very early 
in every experience there comes the sense of imperfection and failure in 
what we have already done, and the wish that it were possible to begin 
the game again. Already there are some things in life which the soul 
would fain get out of life. The first sketch has so marred the canvas 
that the perfect picture seems impossible. In many tones, yet all of them 
tones of satisfaction, men desire the end. (3) Turn now to the other side, 
and think of the dread with which men think of the coming of ends in 
life. There is (a) the sheer force of habit. It is the inertia of life. That 
this should cease to be is shocking and surprising, (b) Very often one 
shrinks from the announcement of the coming end of the condition in 
which he is now living, because, when he hears it, he becomes aware how 
far he is from having yet exhausted the condition in which he is now 
living, (c) There is the great uncertainty which envelops every experi- 
ence which is untried. 

II. The workman’s voice has not to summon out of the east the 
shadows of the night in which no man can work. God sends it. And, 
if around the instability of human life is wrapped the great permanence 
of the life of God, then is there not light upon it all? All satisfaction 
with the temporariness comes only from its being enfolded and embraced 
within the eternity of the Eternal. — Phillips Brooks. 


DEATH— GENERAL 


23 


“For It Is Appointed Unto Men Once to Die.” — Heb. 9:27 (55). 

I. Our attitude toward death — death the inevitable — will have much to 

do with determining our experience in life. 

II. Do we merely thrust it from our minds as an unwelcome intruder? 
Or do we think of it in spite of ourselves, and cower and cringe 
at the thought? 

III. Or have we accepted Christ’s glorious adjustment of the whole mat- 
ter for us, and do we rest in His blessed promises? 

“Your fathers, where are they? And the prophets, do they live 
forever?” — Zech. 1:5. 

It is all but impossible to invest that well-known thought with any 
fresh force; but perhaps, if we look at it from the special angle from 
which the prophet here regards it, we may get some new impression of 
the old truth. That special angle is to bring into connection the eternal 
Word and the transient vehicles and hearers of it. 

Did you ever stand in some roofless, ruined cathedral or abbey 
church, and try to gather round you the generations that had bowed and 
worshiped there? Did you ever step across the threshold of some an- 
cient sanctuary, where the feet of vanished generations had worn down 
the sandstone steps at the entrance? It is solemn to think of the fleeting 
series of men; it is still more striking to bring them into connection with 
that everlasting Word which once they heard, and accepted or rejected. 

But let me bring the thought a little closer. There is not a sitting 
in our churches that has not been sat in by dead people. As I stand here 
and look round, I can repeople almost every pew with faces that we 
shall see no more. Many of you, the older habitues of this place, can do 
the same, and can look and think, “Ah, he used to sit here; she used to 
be in that corner.” And I can remember many mouldering lips that 
have stood in this place where I stand, of friends and brethren that are 
gone. “Your fathers, where are they?” “Graves under us, silent,” is the 
only answer. “And the prophets, do they live forever?” No memories 
are shorter-lived than the memories of the preachers of God’s word. — 
Alexander Maclaren, D. D. 















« 




II. THE DEATH OF LITTLE CHILDREN. 

REFLECTIONS AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 

The Loss of Little Lives (56). 

On an average one-fourth of the population of the world die at, or 
before, the age of seven. One-half die before the seventeenth year. 
“The air is full of farewells to the dying." Hearts are breaking and 
homes being made desolate hourly. And the only ray of light that falls 
across the world’s dark shadow, cast by the death of this multitude of 
little children, shines forth from the Book of Books, in the words of Him 
who has “brought life and immortality to light." 

Drawing Power. (57) — A father whose only child was taken by 
death was noticed eagerly studying his Bible. On being asked what he 
was doing, replied, “I am trying to find out where my little boy has gone, 
for I want to go there too." 

Jesus and the Children (58). 

Jesus alone of all ancient religious teachers noticed children. From 
Him has come the tender love for children to-day. We must thank Him 
for our better homes. Not long since, we read of an incident that aptly 
illustrates this truth. A number of persons were looking at some mission- 
ary pictures with a friend who knew Chinese ways, and were puzzled by 
his quick remark, “These are Christians." They looked closely at the 
group. There was a Chinese father with a quaint Chinese baby in his 
arms, and a Chinese woman sitting beside him. “How do you know?" 
asked one of the number, failing to see anything in the picture to guide 
one as to the religion of the family. “Don’t you see the father has the 
baby in his arms? No heathen Chinaman would think of that," was the 
reply. Christianity is the foundation of the sacred joys of home. 

“In the Morning" (59). 

Reginald John Campbell tells the story of a “little girl who had al- 
ways been accustomed to bid her father good night in the same words. 
She was an only child and loved as only children are. She used to say 
‘Good night, I shall see you again in the morning.* The time came 
when Death’s bright angel, bright to those who go, — dark to those who 
stay, summoned her to heaven. In her last moments she summoned her 
father to her side and putting up her little arms and clasped them around 
his neck and whispered with her rapidly dying strength, ‘Good night, 
dear father, I shall see you again in the morning.’ She was right, as the 
child always is right about the highest things. Sorrow endureth for a 
night, but joy cometh in the morning." 

An Indelible Impress (60). 

If you go into the mint, you will see them place a bit of metal on 
the die. With a touch as silent as a caress, but with the power of a 
mighty force, the stamp moves against it. And when that touch is over, 


26 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


there is an impression upon the coin which will abide when a thousand 
years are passed away. So our life moves up against another, filled with 
the power and stamped with the image of Christ’s likeness; and when 
that touch of parent, or teacher, or friend is over, there are impressions 
that will remain when the sun is cold and the stars have forgotten to 
shine. — Bennett. 

Lifting a Child up into Christ’s Arms (61). 

I remember a few years ago, a little child died, and just before his 
soul went home, he asked his father to lift him up, and the father put 
his hand under the head of the child and raised it up. But the child only 
said, “That is not enough; that is not what I want; lift me right up.” 
The child was wasted all to skin and bones, but still his father complied, 
and lifted the dying child out of his bed. But the little fellow kept 
whispering, fainter and fainter, “Lift me higher, higher, higher!” And 
the father lifted higher and higher, till he lifted him as far as he could 
reach. Yet, still the barely audible v/hisper came, “Higher, father, 
higher,” till at last his head fell back, and his spirit passed up to the 
eternal King — high at last. 

Young Children in the Church (62). 

At one time sixty per cent of the membership of a certain Denver 
church was under fifteen years of age. The rector for years declared that 
he was working for the next generation. He spent himself for the chil- 
dren. While the mature and stolid older folks were not neglected in the 
ministrations, yet the whole set of the church was in the interest of the 
young. To say nothing of the spiritual results, which were enormous, 
but simply as a business proposition, the rector’s course is being abund- 
antly justified. The children are now becoming the men and women of 
affairs, and the church is taking a place of unusual influence in the city. 
— Fouse. 


A Baby’s Smile (63). 

A clergyman, on his way to church, passed by a window where a 
mother was holding a little baby. He smiled at the baby and the baby 
smiled at him. Another time he passed, and the baby was there again, 
and once more he smiled. Soon the baby was taken to the window at 
the hour when he usually passed. They did not know who the gentleman 
was, but one day two of the older children followed to see where he went 
on Sunday. They followed him into the church, and as he preached in a 
winning way, they told their father and mother, who felt interested 
enough in their baby’s friend to wish to go. The whole family, who had 
previously neglected the worship of God, were brought to the Saviour 
by a smile. — Spurgeon. 


Child Nurture (64). 

Let it be understood by parents that the Christian doctrine of child- 
hood as the subject of grace, with Christian youth and manhood as its 
fruit-bearing continuation, imposes strictest attention to the youngest and 
smallest. The nearer to infancy, all the more necessity of watchfulness 


THE DEATH OF LITTLE CHILDREN 


27 


and prayer, of godly example and precept, and the use of all means which 
the Christian parent may command for the sanctification of his offspring. 
First impressions are the most important, because they are not easily, 
if ever wholly effaced. They form the bias of the nature, and parents 
are bound to see that it is not contrary to religion by causing the first 
impressions to be in its favor. But to do this no time is to be lost. They 
must realize that not to begin in time may be to begin too late, that both 
the earthly and eternal destiny may be fixed, and must be in no slight 
measure affected, by the powerfully formative influences that operate 
from infancy on in the life of childhood. How much of loss to the child, 
extending into the years beyond, parental failure in its Christian nurture 
may mean only eternity can tell. — The Christian View of Childhood. 

Bringing the Children to Christ (65) 

A familiar story is that of a visitor to Coleridge who argued vehe- 
mently against the religious instructions of the young, and declared his 
own determination not to “prejudice” his children in favor of any form 
of religion, but to allow them at maturity to choose for themselves. 
The answer of Coleridge to the particular argument was pertinent and 
sound enough: “Why prejudice a garden in favor of flowers and fruit? 
Why not let the clods choose for themselves between cockleberries and 
strawberries?” — The Christian Advocate. 

Saving All the Little Ones (66). 

When I was a child, there was, in the readers, a story about Mr. 
Dustin, whose house was burned, and his wife captured by the Indians, 
and he attempted to flee with his little flock of children. He had decided 
to select one of the children out of the number, and, placing that child 
on the horse with himself, to fly to a place of safety. He rode up to 
the little group of children with that purpose in mind, and at first thought 
he would take the elder boy; for that boy was dear to his heart, and was 
the pride of his life. But he saw that that boy was holding by one hand 
the tiny little girl, only about two years of age; and holding the other 
hand was a larger girl, and the boy and the girl were dragging the little 
one along; and he said, “I cannot take the boy.” Then he thought he 
would take the little one; and when he saw her sweet face turned up to 
him, he said, “She is my joy.” But as he drew near the tiny child, the 
great hazel eyes of the elder girl were turned up to him, and he saw 
the face and eyes of his wife; and the man cried “Never! I will save the 
other children too.” He then turned; and bidding the children fly for 
their lives, he became like a tiger at bay; — and turning toward the sav- 
ages, under his unerring aim and steady and strong blows the savages 
went down; and all the other children were saved with the one he had 
purposed to save. In your work there is another child, and yet another 
child, and yet another child; and God’s thought goes out for all these 
other children. The one thing for each one of us to say, is this: “I will 
stand between all the children of this earth and hell itself.” — Rev. R. L. 
Greene, D. D. 


28 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


Child Religion (67). 

We must distinctly recognize that there is such a thing as piety 
in childhood, and parents are encouraged to hope for its appearance in 
their offspring, provided they will use the means which God has author- 
ized and appointed for its development. The Church is to increase by the 
nurture of the children who are born within it, as well as by the conver- 
sion of those grown-up persons who have been long outside of its pale, 
and the true idea of a Christian household is when all the children in it 
grow up into the love and service of Christ as naturally as they do into 
the likings and dislikings of their parents in other and less important 
respects. — W. M. Taylor, D. D. 

Christ Saves the Children (68). 

A little boy and his sister were going through a narrow railway “cut” 
one day. As they reached the middle of it they heard a train coming. 
Picking the little fellow up his sister crowded him into a cleft in the 
rock- wall and shrank up against him, crying, “Cling close to the rock; 
cling close to the rock.” He clung and they were safe. So Christ, the 
Rock of our salvation, shelters our little ones from the perils of life and 
the terrors of death. 

A Heaven Full of Children (69). 

“Holman Hunt’s magnificent painting, ‘The Triumph of the Inno- 
cents,’ is to my mind the most important religious picture of the cen- 
tury. Breathing through every careful line and glowing color is the soul, 
the spirit of the picture, which irradiates it with 

‘The light that never was on sea or land. 

The consecration and the poet’s dream/ 

“The spirits of the murdered children of Bethlehem — not a great 
multitude, as they are often thoughtlessly depicted, but a little band such 
as really played in that little village — have followed after Jesus on His 
flight. . . . The Holy Child looks around, and seeing the spirits of 
His playmates, welcomes them with the gladness of a divine sympathy. 
These children are the first of His glorious band of martyrs, and as they 
draw near to Him the meaning of their martyrdom flashes upon them, and 
their sorrow is changed into joy. The last group of little ones have not 
yet felt His presence, and the pain and terror of mortality are still heavy 
upon them. Over the head of one of them the halo is just descending. 
. . . One baby saint looks down amazed to see that the scar of the 
sword has vanished from his breast. In front floats a trio of perfectly 
happy spirits, one carrying a censer and singing, the others casting down 
branches of the palm and the vine. At their feet rolls the river of life, 
breaking into golden bubbles, in which the glories of the millennium are 
reflected. 

“All mystical, symbolical, visionary! But is it not also true? Think 
for a moment. It is the religion of Jesus that has transfigured martyr- 


THE DEATH OF LITTLE CHILDREN 


29 


dom and canonized innocence. It is the religion of Jesus that tells us of 
a heaven which is full of children.” — Henry Van Dyke, The Christ-Child 
in Art. 


“What a Waste of Life (70). 

Some while ago, in a mood for such thoughts, our eye fell on the item 
that in one year the deaths in four Eastern cities amounted to 43,432; 
and of this number 24,767 were children under five years of age. 

The last sentence fixed our attention — twenty-four thousand, seven 
hundred and sixty-seven children died during the year! This in four 
cities only! Of the rest of the forty-three thousand, four hundred and 
thirty- two, who can tell their eternal destiny? Some went to heaven, 
some went to hell. But concerning these little ones none can doubt. 
Taking the aggregate of other cities, villages, and the country at large, 
we comprehend a fact that finds expression at the Saviour’s lips: “Of 
such is the kingdom of God.” And in a sacred couplet: 

Millions of infant souls compose 
The family above. 

The adults had worked out their mission or failed to do it. But these 
little ones! Had they no mission? Was their being a failure? Lived 
they and suffered and died, and is the world all the same as though they 
had not been? Nay, verily. Theirs was a precious ministry, and one 
that they only could fulfill. 

“What a waste of life!” exclaims the worldly economist as he figures 
up the statistics of population. “They lived in vain” is the thought of 
the man ambitious of making his mark on the age. “Mere blanks, flow- 
ers that came to no fruit, broken off, fallen, faded” is the thought and 
feeling of many. 

But Christian philosophy presents a more ennobling and comforting 
view. Cold and selfish would this world of ours be without these chil- 
dren. They preach the evangel of beauty and innocence; they break the 
incrustations of worldliness; they come to love and to be loved; they 
touch chords vibrating solemnly, sweetly, which are reserved only for 
their tiny hands; they stir in the heart hidden wells of feeling; they 
preserve human sympathy from utter ossification; they deeply subsoil 
our hard natures. 


Children in a Chariot of Fire (71). 

When the Lawrence Mills were on fire a number of years ago — I 
don’t mean on fire, but when the mill fell in — the great mill fell in, and 
after it had fallen in, the ruins caught fire. There was only one room left 
entire, and in it were three Mission Sunday-school children imprisoned. 
The neighbors and all hands got their shovels and picks and crowbars, 
and were working to set the children free. It came on night and they 
had not yet reached the children. When they were near them, by some 
mischance a lantern broke, and the ruins caught fire. They tried to put 
it out, but could not succeed. They could talk v/ith the children, and 


30 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


even pass them some coffee and some refreshments, and encourage them 
to keep up. But, alas, the flames drew nearer and nearer to this prison. 
Superhuman were the efforts made to rescue the children; the men 
bravely fought back the flames; but the fire gained fresh strength and 
returned to claim its victims. Then piercing shrieks arose when the spec- 
tators saw that the efforts of the firemen were hopeless. The children 
saw their fate. They then knelt down and commenced to sing the little 
hymn we have all been taught in our Sunday-school days, Oh! how sweet: 
— “Let others seek a home below which flames devour and waves over- 
flow.” The flames had now reached them; the stifling smoke began to 
pour into their little room, and they began to sink, one by one, upon the 
floor. A few moments more and the fire circled around them, and their 
souls were taken into the bosom of Christ. — Moody. 

A New Interest In Heaven (72). 

A minister who had lost his child asked another minister to come 
and preach for him. He came and he told how he lived on one side of a 
river and felt very little interest in the people on the other side, until his 
daughter was married and went over there to live, and then every morn- 
ing he went to the window and looked over that river, and felt very much 
concerned about that town and all the people there. “Now,” said he, “I 
think that as this child has crossed another river, heaven will be dearer 
to him than ever it has been before.” Shall we not just let our hearts 
and affections be set on the other side of the river? It is but a step; 
it is but a vail; we shall soon be in the other world. 

Christ’s Enfolding Love (73). 

“The best sermon I ever heard Mr. Spurgeon preach was in the Boys’ 
Orphanage. There was an infirmary connected with the orphanage, and 
in it was a dying boy. Mr. Spurgeon sat down by the little cot, and in a 
voice full of tenderness, said to him, ‘My dear, you have a great many 
precious promises all around this room, and do you know you are not 
going to stay with us long? Do you love Jesus?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Jesus loves 
you better than you love Him, and He is going to take you to Himself. 
There will be no suffering there. Did you have a good night?’ ‘No, sir; 

I coughed all night.’ ‘Ah, my child, coughing all night and weary all day. 
Here, outside are the boys overflowing with health, and you coughing all 
night, weary all night — but Jesus loves you, and He is going to take you 
to Him, and then He will tell you all about it, and then you will be glad 
you waited here so patiently.'” — John B. Gough. 

Following the Lambs (74). 

A traveler in the Orient told of seeing a shepherd trying to get his 
sheep to come to him, across a stream. They refused to respond to his 
call until he took two little lambs over in his arms. The old ones fol- 
lowed readily then. Their lambs on the other side, drew them. So chil- 
dren in heaven often draw parents thither. 


THE DEATH OF LITTLE CHILDREN 


1 


The Difference (75). 

One of the missionary magazines gave a touching incident recently 
illustrating this difference between the tomb of hope and of despair: 
Two Korean women stood watching a funeral procession on its way to 
the foreign cemetery. “What sight is this?” said one. “The burying 
of the missionary’s son,” answered the other. “That is very, very sad,” 
replied the first. In Korea a son is the most precious of all possessions. 
“It is not so bad for them as for us,” said the other sadly. “They know 
something that makes them sure that they will get their children back 
some day. We know nothing about how to get ours back again.” 

We need the darkness of a heathen sky against which to see the 
glory of the resurrection hope, in order fully to appreciate it. How it 
takes the bitterest sting from the loss of dear ones, and how it cheers 
men as, one by one, they approach life’s eventide. 

Her Only Hope (76). 

One who crossed the Atlantic some years ago related this pathetic 
incident of the voyage. 

The saddest sight of life we ever witnessed was on an ocean voyage, 
in the death and the burial of the child of a lowly German mother. Her 
husband had been smitten by consumption, and with that longing so pe- 
culiar to this form of disease thought if he could only breathe the air of 
his own boyhood’s Rhine cliffs he would be well again. But being poor 
he had to cross in February in the steerage. The cold winds, scanty fare, 
and hard beds were too much for him, and he had but scarcely reached 
his home when hemorrhages attacked him and he sent to St. Louis for 
his wife and only child, a son, that he might see them once again. The 
wife sold her scanty household outfit and taking her babe, set out to see 
her husband’s face ere she should know what penniless widowhood and 
orphanage meant. 

She wept night and day, and most of all because she knew not what 
would become of the fatherless child. But soon she learned God’s pur- 
pose; the child wasted away; his mother’s grief had robbed him of his 
nature’s nurture, and she could secure no other. The poor people with 
her taxed themselves, and the little milk left from cabin use was pro- 
cured, but the child closed its eyes in its mother’s arms. She sat with 
it in her arms, bemoaning her sad fate until the ship’s officers compelled 
its burial. 

The ship carpenter prepared the rough box with the weights to sink 
it to the ocean’s bed; tender hands clipped the golden locks from the 
little head, to be carried to the dying father, and what remained was 
parted over the pale brow. No wraps enfolded it but the faded calico 
gown. A poorer neighbor spread her white linen handkerchief over its 
face, and the carpenter filled up the space with clean pine shavings, and 
as he did his work he groaned and said: “God bless this poor mother, 
God be thanked the wee bairn is safe.” The captain came down to read 
the committal service according to law. He was a hard-faced, swearing, 
blustering Englishman, but beneath had a manly heart. He said to the 
carpenter, “Screw down the lid.” 


32 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


“Oh, no, captain,” said the heart-stricken mother, “let me look at my 
baby once more.” 

He turned away and waited. Again he said to the grief-stricken 
mother, “I am sorry to deprive you of any comfort. God knows you have 
few enough, but I must read the service.” 

She lifted herself, and the carpenter screwed down the lid, amid the 
sobs of the poor around her and the tears as well of those happier in this 
world’s goods looking down from the upper deck. The captain read in 
plaintive tones the service, and he faltered as he read, “I am the resur- 
rection and the life.” Poor man! Why he faltered there at the anchor 
of human hope we could never tell. He took the box to be lowered into 
the billowy bed, the mother shrieked: “Oh captain,” and laid hold once 
more of her treasure; the captain stood waiting for her to kiss that 
rough box, and then she said in broken English, “Fadder, Thy will be 
done,” and the little casket dropped into the sea, which took it quickly 
to its bosom, and a little bubble rose, the sea’s last messenger to tell us 
that all was well. 

We Would Not Bring Them Back (77). 

There is a beautiful story, says Dr. J. R. Miller, of a boy whose 
young sister was dying. He had heard that if he could secure but a 
single leaf from the tree of life that grew in the garden of God, the ill- 
ness could be healed. He set out to find the garden, and implored the 
angel sentinel to let him have one leaf. The angel asked the boy if he 
could promise that his sister should never be sick any more if his request 
were granted, and that she should never be unhappy, nor do wrong, nor 
be cold or hungry, nor be treated harshly. The boy said he could not 
promise. Then the angel opened the gate a little way bidding the child 
to look into the garden for a moment, to have one glimpse of its beauty. 
“Then, if you still wish it,” said the angel, “I will myself ask the King 
for a leaf from the tree of life to heal your sister.” The child looked in; 
and, after seeing all the wondrous beauty and blessedness within the 
gates, he said softly to the angel, “I will not ask the leaf now. There Is 
no place in all this world so beautiful as that. There is no friend so kind 
as the Angel of Death. I wish he would take me, too.” 

Plucked by the Gardener (78). 

If a rosebud is plucked from the parent bush and placed in water, It 
will blossom into a beautiful rose, sooner than its equally developed sis- 
ter that is left on the bush. Yet we mourn when God, the loving soul- 
gardner, plucks from its earthly environment a life that is just beginning 
to unfold its possibilities. To our earthbound vision the life is nipt in 
the bud. We cover the little casket with cut flowers, and it is fitting that 
we do so, for they are the emblems of the life that is perfected by its 
changed environments. The gardener takes it away that it may the more 
quickly develop into the perfect blossom of eternity. — The Homiletic 
Review. 

“Father, Father, Come This Way” (79). 

I remember a number of years ago I went out of Chicago to try to 


THE DEATH OF LITTLE CHILDREN 


33 


preach. I went down to a little town where was being held a Sunday- 
school convention. I was a perfect stranger in the place and when I ar- 
rived a man stepped up to me and asked me if my name was Moody. 
I told him it was, and he invited me to his house. When I got there he 
said he had to go to the convention, and asked me to excuse his wife, as 
she, not having a servant, had to attend to her household duties. He put 
me into the parlor, and told me to amuse myself as best I could till he 
came back. I sat there, but the room was dark, and I could not read, and 
I got tired. So I thought I would try and get the children and play with 
them. I listened for some sound of childhood in the house, but could not 
hear a single evidence of the presence of little ones. When my friend 
came back I said: “Haven’t you any children?” “Yes,” he replied, “I 
have one, but she’s in Heaven, and I am glad she is there, Moody.” “Are 
you glad that your child’s dead?” I inquired. 

He went on to tell me how he had worshiped that child; how his 
whole life had been bound up in her to the neglect of his Saviour. One 
day he had come home and found her dying. Upon her death he accused 
God of being unjust. He saw some of his neighbors with their children 
around them. Why hadn’t He taken some of them away? He was rebel- 
lious. After he came home from her funeral he said: “All at once I 
thought I heard her little voice calling me, but the truth came to my 
heart that she was gone. Then I thought I heard her feet upon the 
stairs; but I knew she was lying in the grave. The thought of her loss 
almost made me mad. I threw myself on my bed and wept bitterly. I 
fell asleep, and while I slept I had a dream, but it almost seemed to me 
like a vision. 

“I thought I was going over a barren field, and I came to a river so 
dark and chill-looking that I was going to turn away, when all at once I 
saw on the opposite bank the most beautiful sight I ever looked at. I 
thought death and sorrow could never enter into that lovely region. 
Then I began to see beings all so happy looking, and among them I saw 
my little child. She waved her little angel hand to me and cried, ‘Father, 
father, come this way.’ I thought her voice sounded much sweeter than 
it did on earth. In my dream I thought I went to the water and tried to 
cross it, but found it deep and the current so rapid that I thought if I 
entered it would carry me away from her forever. I tried to find a boat- 
man to take me over, but couldn’t, and I walked up and down the river 
trying to find a crossing, and still she cried: ‘Come this way.’ All at 
once I heard a voice come rolling down, ‘I am the way, the truth, and 
the life; no man cometh unto the Father but by Me.’ The voice awoke 
me from my sleep and I knew it was my Saviour calling me, and pointing 
the way for me to reach my darling child. I am now a Sunday School 
superintendent, my wife has been converted, and we shall, through Jesu«v 
as the way, see our child some day.” — Moody. 

Not Afraid To Go (80). 

A tiny child belonging to a primary class was very ill. Perhaps a 
shadow fell from the grave faces of the mother, nurse, and doctor. The 
little one looked into the dear mother’s eyes and asked, “Am I going to 


34 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


die?" “You are very sick, darling,” said the mother, steadying her heart 
and her voice for her child’s sake. “Perhaps Jesus means to take you 
home to be with Him.” 

“Will I go to Jesus, mother?” “Yes, dear.” “Is it that Jesus that Mrs. 
C. tells about in the class — just the same one?” “Yes, the very same 
Jesus.” “Oh, then I’m not afraid to go to Him, for Mrs. C. keeps telling 
us how good He is, and how He loves the little children and says, ‘Come 
unto me and forbid them not.’ ” — Julia H. Johnson. 

Blossoms of Hope (81). 

In the land in which Jesus once lived, they tell a beautiful legend. 
On the morning of that first Easter Day, it is said, as Jesus stepped forth 
from the grave, immediately flowers of the most fascinating beauty burst 
forth wherever His foot had touched the earth. His disciples, had they 
but looked with care, might have found Him by the beauties He left in His 
wake. Only a legend indeed, but in a spiritual sense it is absolutely 
true. From the grave that day, Christ brought us fair blossoms of prom- 
ise and of hope; we still gather them and rejoice in their possession. 

Merely Transplanted Flowers (82). 

The children whom Christ has taken to Himself are just as truly 
alive as those which He has left on earth. As Dr. Maclaren well said: 
“The dead and the living are not names of two classes which exclude 
each other. Much rather, there are none who are dead. The dead are 
the living who have died. Whilst they were dying they lived, and after 
they were dead they lived more fully. Every one who has died is at this 
instant in the full possession of all his faculties, in the intensest exer- 
cise of all his capacities, standing somewhere in God’s great universe 
ringed with the sense of God’s presence, and feeling in every fibre of his 
being, that life which comes after death — that life which is not less 
but more real. 


God Puts Out the Light (83). 

The family group was broken, and the bereaved mother wept over 
her loss with a friend. “It’s bad enough all the time,” she sobbed, “but 
it’s at bedtime that I miss Jimmie most. You see, he had always been 
rather delicate, and I took an extra look at him after he was in bed. 
Oh, dear! I can almost see him now, as he used to smile up at me after 
I’d tucked him in nicely and kissed him, and was ready to put out the 
light.” 

“God has done that for Jimmie now,” said the friend, after a silent 
prayer for guidance in the choice of the right word. 

“What do I mean?” as the mother started. “Just this, dear. God 
loved Jimmie even more than you did, and He saw that it was the dear 
little lad’s time to rest. How many times, I wonder, have you gently in- 
sisted that Jimmie come to bed when he was all eagerness to stay up 
longer? How many times have you lovingly turned out the light while 
he was still anxious to talk and laugh with you? Well — the heavenly 
Father, knowing Jimmie’s needs better than you could, saw that it was 
time for a longer rest, time to put out the earthly light. 


THE DEATH OF LITTLE CHILDREN 


35 


“A greater light, we cannot doubt, now shines about Jimmie, but his 
tired little body no longer needs such light as we know. So God has ex- 
tinguished it in His own good time and way.” 

The thought that so tenderly comforted the weeping mother is full 
of solace for us all, since to each and all must come, recurrently, the 
time when “God puts out the light” that has transfigured and transformed 
our working days. Not the light of life, perhaps, but the light of joy, of 
success, of just pride in some dearly loved one, of health, perhaps even 
of hope and faith. And in such times of darkness nothing can so uphold, 
so strengthen, so encourage us as the thought that the gloom and shad- 
ows come from God Himself; that we have but to wait His good time for 
the return of the normal sunshine. For, by the Father’s own appoint- 
ment, day follows night, gladness follows sorrow, peace follows trial, just 
as inevitably and surely as night is succeeded by day in the natural 
world. 

Small need to more than suggest the seed-thought. In times of 
grief especially, it is well to seize a good thought and hold on to it firmly 
till we can realize its truth, believe it, feel it. And this comforting, help- 
ful thought of our heavenly Father Himself for our own good, putting out 
the light which we, infantwise, would insist upon retaining — what does 
it mean but “Our times are in His hand?” — Ethel Colson in The Continent. 

Cross Lots. (84) — An aged Christian was at first sad when he heard 
of the death of a little girl whom he greatly loved. Then suddenly his 
face grew bright, and he said: “Why, she’s gone cross lots, while I am 
going all around this long distance. I am glad for her.” — S. S. Times. 

A Completed Life (85). 

Sometimes God calls our children home to Himself for their good. 
He may do it because He would save them from a sad and sorrowful 
future. It is difficult to complete life righteously and grandly. Boyd, the 
famous “Country Parson,” writes: “It comes back to me how Norman 
McLeod came into my father’s house, the day after that best of all good 
men died. His words were: ‘Now here is a completed life. He never 
can do anything to vex or disappoint you now, God knows what you and 
I may come to.’ After a pause: ‘No, nothing of that; by God’s mercy we 
shall end well.’ ” The great Lord President Inglis, when it was proposed 
to set up some grand memorial of his career, wisely objected, replying, 
“Nobody could tell how he might besmirch his reputation ere he went.” 
God knows the future of our children and may take them to save from 
a sad future. — Selected. 

The Rustle of Angel Wings (86) 

The twilight hour had come. The last lingering rays were fading 
beyond the western horizon. The stars had appeared on duty for their 
long night vigil. The soft southern zephyrs were fanning my tired brow. 
The fragrant aroma of the tall magnolia and the full-blown lilac were 
borne to me upon the evening breeze. The blessed Bible lay open before 
me. I had been reading the great apostle’s letter to the Church at Corinth. 
Through them he had spoken to the ages and to me. I was ravished with 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


86 


his statement. The lesson of “the corn of wheat” stirred my heart as 
never before. It was an hour of sweet and holy meditation. My angel 
baby hovered near me. Listening love heard the rustle of her wings. 
How thin the veil! Just beyond the flesh that twilight air was filled 
with the disembodied dead. My loved and lost for a little while! Be- 
yond the vale of tears, beyond the valley of sighs roamed my sainted 
child. Yes; we shall meet where the eye is fire and the heart is flame. 

In that hour of reverie suddenly a merry child burst into my room. 
In a clear, flutelike tone it broke into a wild, ecstatic glee. The piano sat 
in the shadow of the opposite corner. Its keys were without the touch 
of human hand. The silver chords were dumb and silent. The moment 
the happy child uttered its cry of joy my ear caught the soft and distant 
sound of music. I listened intently. The child’s voice had stirred the 
silent strings. The flutelike note had started its own sound wave. We 
do not need any dissertation on science here. Take your theory and pass 
on. The old silver chord in the very pitch and tone of that elf’s voice 
began to vibrate. It created its own sweet harmony. The entire gamut 
felt the tremor of that voice. 

Like phantoms, multitudes of thoughts passed before me in that 
twilight vision. The dying melody of those silver chords, whose silent 
tongues were set a-going, stirred me profoundly. I thought of Whittier’s 
soliloquy in “My Soul and I.” 

Like warp and woof, all destinies 
Are woven fast, 

Linked in sympathy like the keys 
Of an organ vast. 

Pluck one thread, and the web ye mar; 

Break but one 

Of a thousand keys, and the paining jar 
Through all will run. 

Is not my heart like a harp of a thousand strings? Will not the touch 
of an almighty hand sweep every chord of the human soul? Will not the 
music be like that of same grand cathedral choir whose sound shall 
reach the distant shore? Ah! your soul may be silent now, but it must 
needs be kept in tune with the Infinite. In some twilight hour your ear 
will catch the sound of its softest melody and will feel the renewal of 
some vanished hand. 

But there is a difference. If these chords are swept by spirits, the 
forces that live beyond the shadows, its music can never die. And there 
is a note whose harmony is soon gone; it soon fades away. For 

Time has laid his hand 
Upon my heart gently, not smiting it; 
v But as a harper lays his open palm 
Upon his harp, to deaden its vibrations. 

— Rev. J. Marvin Nichols. 


THE DEATH OF LITTLE CHILDREN 


37 


The Little Children (87). 

“When our little boy died” has been the beginning of a pilgrimage 
of many bereaved parents. The death and burial of the babe dates im- 
pressions on the whole family circle that have matured to godliness. 

The old may outlive their friends, the middle-aged may make enemies 
who are glad to be rid of them, or, wandering off, they may die where 
none lament; but the babe is without prejudice in life and mighty in 
death. It is God’s messenger of reconciliation, his flag of truce in this 
world of enmities, envies, wrath and strife. It has a strong hold on two 
hearts, if no more. The empty crib, the half-worn shoes, the soft locks 
of hair that few may see prolong the painful yet pleasing memory of the 
angel visitor that looked in upon us and smiled, and went to heaven, bid- 
ding us, amid care and sorrow, to follow on. 

There is something so peculiarly affecting in the loss of a child that 
we sympathize with the parent who said that he believed no minister 
was prepared to bury another’s child who had not buried one of his own. 

“It was only a baby.” Ah! they know not, who talk so slightingly, 
how deep and long a shadow that little form can cast. “In the death of 
children heaven is receiving large contributions from earth. Next to the 
conversion of a soul, the enemy of God and man may take least pleasure 
in the death of a child. His snares are prevented and his prey lost.” 

We bless God for our creation. The opening of a career of immortal 
existence is in itself a great event — a mission of life and glory which 
death cannot frustrate. Though the voice of praise swell as the sound 
of many waters, and the celestial harpers are numberless, yet His ear 
detects every new voice and joyful string, and the praise of these little 
ones glorifies Him. In this view the babe, even of a few days and sickly, 
that goeth from the cradle to the grave, is of more intrinsic importance 
than material worlds. 

The mystery of pain is one of the hardest trials of faith. It is nat- 
ural to associate suffering with guilt. But what have they done, the in- 
nocents? Even here there is a lesson and a consolation if our hearts can 
receive it. He who knew no sin was made perfect through suffering. 
May not our children, who cannot confess Him before men, be permitted 
at this one point to have fellowship with their Saviour and ours? May 
not this refining fire chasten and prepare for the eternal heaven the 
fallen nature which they, with us, inherit? A drop of this baptismal fire 
falls even on them. By a brief experience of pain in the mortal body, 
before they quit it for the immortal, even they come to some knowledge 
of the price of their redemption, and the contrast of a few painful hours 
may heighten the joys of eternity. 

A Hindoo woman said to a missionary: “Surely your Bible was 
written by a woman.” “Why?” “Because it says so many kind things 
for women. Our Shastas never refer to us but in reproach.” “Parents, 
watching by the couch of suffering innocence and seeing the desire of 
their eyes taken away at a stroke, have found themselves busy running 
over the Scriptures for comfort and gathering up, as a stay of their 


38 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


hearts, what God has said about their little children.” How full and 
precious and unequivocal are the passages of comfort! The conclusion 
is: Surely the Bible was written by a parent. And so it was. He 
knows the heart of a parent and works by it to the glory of His grace. 

"O, prattling tongues, never formed to speech, and now still in 
death, how eloquently you preach to us! O, little pattering feet, leading 
the way, how many are following after you to heaven!” We thank God 
for your ministry. And if it be in vain, the fault and the loss will be all 
our own. — Bishop McTyeire. 

A New Cradle. (88) — A little girl had a baby sister who died, and 
the little baby was put into a tiny coffin. When the little girl saw it, slie 
said, "Mother, baby has got a new cradle!” That was a pretty name for 
it. Death is but being lulled to sleep in the arms of Infinite Love.-pThe 
Free Methodist. 


The Universal Experience (89). 

A Hindoo woman, the beautiful Eastern legend tells us, lost her only 
child. Wild with grief, she implored a prophet to give back her little one 
to her love. He looked at her for a long while tenderly, and said: 

"Go, my daughter, bring me a handful of rice from a house into 
which Death has never entered, and I will do as thou desirest.” 

The woman at once began her search. She went from dwelling to 
dwelling, and had no difficulty in obtaining what the prophet specified; 
but when they had granted it, she inquired: 

"Are you all here around the hearth — father, mother, children — none 
missing?” 

The people invariably shook their heads, with sighs and looks of 
sadness. Far and wide as she wandered, there was always some vacant 
seat by the hearth. And gradually, as she passed on, the legend says, 
the waves of her grief subsided before the spectacle of sorrow every- 
where; and her heart, ceasing to be occupied with its own selfish pang, 
flowing out in strong yearning of sympathy with the universal suffering, 
tears of anguish softened into tears of pity, passion melted away in com- 
passion, she forgot herself in the general interest, and found redemption 
in redeeming. — Rev. F. B. Meyer. 

Resignation (90). 

There is no flock, however watched or tended, 

But one dead lamb is there! 

There is no fireside, howsoe’er defended, 

But has one vacant chair. 

The air is full of farewells to the dying, 

And mournings for the dead; 

The heart of Rachel, for her children crying, 

Will not be comforted! 


THE DEATH OF LITTLE CHILDREN 


39 


Let us be patient! These severe afflictions 
Not from the ground arise; 

But oftentimes celestial benedictions 
Assume this dark disguise. 

There is no death! What seems so is transition; 
This life of mortal breath 

Is but the suburb of the life elysian. 

Whose portal we call death. 

She is not dead — the child of our affection — 
But gone into that school 

Where she no longer needs our poor protection 
And Christ himself doth rule. 

Not as a child shall we again behold her, 

For when with raptures wild, 

In our embraces we again enfold her, 

She will not be a child; 

But a fair maiden in her Father’s mansion, 
Clothed with celestial grace; 

And beautiful with all the soul’s expansion 
Shall we behold her face. 

— Longfellow. 


Safe in Heaven (91). 

“I spoke to my God 
As I knelt in prayer, 

And I said, “Thy care 
Is our guard and guide. 

Is she ’neath the sod 
Who they said has died?” 

And the answer came as a trumpet calls, 

“She abides with me in the heavenly halls.” 

That Immortal Sea (92). 

In a season of calm weather 
Though inland far we be, 

Our souls have sight of that immortal sea which 
brought us hither. 

Can in a moment travel thither, 

And see the children sport upon the shore, 

And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore. 

— Wordsworth. 


40 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


They Would Not Wish Him Back (93). 

“The golden gates were open 
And heavenly ‘Angels’ smiled 
And with their tuneful harpstring 
Welcomed the little child. 

“They shouted ‘high and holy, 

A child hath entered in, 

And safe from all temptation 
A soul is sealed from sin.’ 

“They led him through the golden streets 
On to the King of kings, 

And a glory fell upon him 
From the rustlings of their wings. 

“The Saviour smiled upon him 
As none on earth had smiled, 

And Heaven’s great glory shone around 
The little earth-horn child. 

“On earth they missed the little one, 

They sighed and wept and sighed, 

And wondered if another such 
As theirs had ever died. 


“Oh! had they seen through those high gates 
The welcome to him given. 

They never would have wished their child 
Back from his home in Heaven.” 

— Selected. 

Legend of the Pitcher of Tears (94). 


[The following poem was writt 
the painting, “The Pitcher of Tears' 
peared in the Golden Rule.] 

Many days a stricken mother, 

To her loss unreconciled, 

Wept hot, hitter tears, complain- 
ing, 

“Cruel Death has stolen my 
child.” 

But one night as she was sleeping, 
To her soul there came a vision, 
And she saw her little daughter 
In the blessed fields Elysian. 


n by Mary Amsden Burroughs, to 
by Paul Thurman. The poem ap- 

All alone the child was standing, 
And a heavy pitcher holding; 
Swift the mother hastened to her 
Close around her arms infolding. 

“Why so sad and lonely, darling?” 

Asked she, stroking soft her hair, 
“See the many merry children 
Playing in the garden fair. 

Look, they’re beckoning and call- 
ing, 


THE DEATH OF LITTLE CHILDREN 


41 


Go and help them pluck the 
flowers, 

Put aside the heavy pitcher, 

Dance away the sunny hours.” 

From the tender lips a-quiver 
Fell the answer on her ears: 

“On the earth my mother’s weep- 
ing, 

And this pitcher holds the tears. 

Tears that touch the heavenly blos- 
soms 

Spoil the flowers where’er they 
fall; 


So as long as she is weeping, 

I must stand and catch them all.” 

“Wait no longer,” cried the 
dreamer; 

“Run and play, sweet child of 
mine; 

Never more shall tears of sorrow 
Spoil your happiness divine.” 

Like a bird released from bondage 
Sped the happy maid away. 

And the mother woke, her courage 
Strengthened for each lonely 
day. 


Once and Forever (95). 

Our own are our own forever, God taketh not back His gift; 

They may pass beyond our vision, but our souls shall find them out, 
When the waiting is all accomplished, and the deathly shadows lift. 
And glory is given for grieving, and the surety of God for doubt. 


We may find the waiting bitter, and count the silence long: 

God knoweth we are dust, and He pitieth our pain; 

And when faith has grown to fulness, and the silence changed to song. 
We shall eat the fruit of patience, and shall hunger not again. 


So sorrowing hearts, who humbly in darkness and all alone 
Sit missing a dear lost presence and the joy of a vanished day. 

Be comforted with this message that our own are forever our own. 
And God, who gave the gracious gift. He takes it never away. 

— Susan Coolidge, in Sunday School Times. 

Still With Us (96). 

In that great cloister’s stillness and seclusion. 

By guardian angels led, 

Safe from temptation, safe from sin’s pollution. 

She lives, whom we call dead. 

Day after day, we think what she is doing 
In those bright realms of air; 

Year after year, her tender steps pursuing. 

Behold her grown more fair. 

Thus do we walk with her, and keep unbroken 
The bond which nature gives, 

Thinking that our remembrance, though unspoken, 

May reach her where she lives. 


Longfellow. 


42 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 

The Reaper Death (97). 

“There is a reaper, whose name is Death, 

And with his sickle keen 

He reaps the bearded grain at a breath. 

And the flowers that grow between. 

‘Shall I have naught that is fair?’ saith he; 

‘Have naught but the bearded grain? 

Though the breath of these flowers is sweet to me, 
I will give them all back again.’ ” 

He gazed at the flowers with tearful eyes, 

He kissed their drooping leaves; 

It was for the Lord of paradise 
He bound them in his sheaves. 

‘My Lord has need of these flowerets gay/ 

The reaper said, and smiled; 

‘Dear tokens of the earth are they. 

Where He was once a Child. 

‘They shall all bloom in fields of light. 

Transplanted by my care, 

And saints upon their garments white 
These sacred blossoms wear/ 

And the mother gave, In tears and pain. 

The flowers she most did love; 

She knew she would find them all again 
In the fields of light above. 

O, not in cruelty, not in wrath. 

The Reaper came that day; 

*Twas an angel visited the green earth, 

And took the flowers away.” 

— Longfellow, 







Glorified (98). 

Not changed, but glorified! Oh beauteous language 
For those who weep. 

Mourning the loss of some dear face departed, 
Fallen asleep. 

Hushed into silence, never more to comfort 
The hearts of men, 

Gone, like sunshine of another country, 

Beyond our ken. 


THE DEATH OF LITTLE CHILDREN 


43 


We Shall Find Them (99). 

I wonder, O, I wonder, where the little faces go, 

That come and smile and stay awhile, and pass like flakes of snow — 
The dear, wee baby faces that the world has never known, 

But mothers hide, so tender-eyed, deep in their hearts alone. 

“I love to think that somewhere, in the country we call heaven, 
The land most fair of everywhere will unto them be given: 

A land of little faces — very little, very fair — 

And every one shall know her own and cleave unto it there. 

“O grant it, loving Father, to the broken hearts that plead! 

Thy way is best — yet O, to rest in perfect faith indeed! 

To know that we shall find them — even them, the wee white dead — 
At Thy right hand in Thy bright land, by living waters led!” 

His Monument (100). 

He built a house, time laid it in the dust; 

He wrote a book, its title now forgot; 

He ruled a city, but his name is not 
On any tablet graven, or where rust 
Can gather from disuse, or marble bust. 

He took a child from out a wretched cot; 

Who on the State dishonor might have brought; 

And reared him in the Christian’s hope and trust. 

The boy to manhood grown, became a light 
To many souls and preached to human need 
The wondrous love of the Omnipotent. 

The work has multiplied like stars at night 
When darkness deepens; every noble deed 
Lasts longer than a granite monument. 

— Sarah Knowles Bolton. 

Little Boy Blue’s Toys (101). 

Ay, faithful to Little Boy Blue they stand 
Each in the same old place — 

Awaiting the touch of a little hand, 

The smile of a little face; 

And they wonder, as waiting the long years through 
In the dust of that little chair, 

[What has become of our Little Boy Blue, 

Since he kissed them and put them there. 

— Eugene Field. 

Transplanted (102). 

Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade 
Death came with friendly care; 

The opening bud to heaven conveyed, 

And bade it blossom there. 


44 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


"In the Heart of a Child” (104). 

An angel paused in his onward flight 
With a seed of love and truth and right 
And said, “O, where can this seed be sown 
Where ’twill yield most fruit when fully grown?” 
The Saviour heard and said as He smiled, 

“Place it at once in the heart of a child.” 

Dear Little Hands (105). 

Dear little hands, I miss them so! 

All through the day, wherever I go — 

All through the night, how lonely it seems, 

For no little hands wake me out of my dreams 
I miss them all through the weary hours, 

I miss them as others miss sunshine and flowers; 
Daytime or nighttime, wherever I go, 

Dear little hands, I miss them so. 

The Children On the Shore (106). 

But for those first affections. 

Those shadowy recollections. 

Which, be they what they may, 

Are yet the fountain light of all our day, 

Are yet a master light of all our seeing; 

Uphold us — cherish us — and have power to make 
Our noisy years seem moments in the being 
Of the eternal silence; truths that wake. 

To perish never; 

Which neither listlessness nor mad endeavor 
Nor man nor boy. 

Nor all that is at enmity with joy. 

Can utterly abolish or destroy! 

Hence, in a season of calm weather, 

Though inland far we be, 

Our souls have sight of that immortal sea 
Which brought us hither, 

Can in a moment travel thither, 

And see the children sport upon the shore. 

And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore. 

— Wordsworth. 

The Maister and the Bairns (107). 

The Maister sat in a wee cot hoose, 

Tae the Jordan’s waters near, 

An’ the fisher folk crushed and crooded roun’. 

The Maister’s words tae hear. 


THE DEATH OF LITTLE CHILDREN 


45 


An’ even the bairns frae the near-han’ streets 
Were mixin’ in wi’ the thrang — 

Laddies and lassies, wi’ wee bare feet. 

Jinkin’ the crood amang. 

An’ ane o’ the Twal’ at the Maister’s side, 

Rase up an’ cried alood — 

“Come, come, bairns, this is nae place for you, 
Rin awa’ hame out the crood.’’ 

But the Maister said, as they turned awa’ — 
“Let the wee bairns come tae Me!” 

An’ He gathered them roun’ Him whar He sat. 
An’ lifted ane up on His knee. 

An’ He gathered them roun’ Him whar He sat. 
An’ straikit their curly hair. 

An’ He said to the won’erin’ fisher folk 
Wha crooded aroun’ Him there — 

“Sen na’ the weans awa’ frae me, 

But raither this lesson lairn — 

That nane’ll win in at heaven’s yett 
That isna as pure as a bairn!” 

An’ He that wisna oor kith and kin. 

But a Prince o’ the far awa’, 

Gethered the wee anes in His airms, 

An’ blessed them ane an’ a’. 

O Thou who watchest the ways o’ men. 

Keep our feet in the heavenly airt, 

An’ bring us at last tae Thy hame abune, 

As pure as the bairns in hairt. 

— W. Thomson, 


It Is Best (108). 

Mothers, I see you with your nursery light. 
Leading your babies all in white, 

To their sweet rest; 

Christ, the Good Shepherd, carries mine tonight, 
And that is best! 

I cannot help tears when I see them twine 
Their fingers in yours, and their bright curls shine 
On your warm breast; 

But the Saviour’s is purer than yours or mine: 

He can love best! 


46 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


You tremble each hour because your arms 

Are weak; your heart is wrung with alarms. 

And sore oppressed; 

My darlings are safe, out of reach of harm;] 

And that is best. 

You know over yours may hang even now 

Pain and disease, whose fulfilling slow 
Naught can arrest; 

Mine in God’s gardens run to and fro. 

And that is best. 

You know that of yours the feeblest one 

And dearest may live long years alone, 

Unloved, unblest; 

Mine are cherished of saints around God’s throne. 

And that is best. 

You must dread for years the crime that sears. 

Dark guilt unwashed by repentant tears, 

And unconfessed; 

Mine entered spotless on eternal years. 

Oh, how much the best! 

i 

But grief is selfish, and I cannot see 

Always why I should so stricken be, 

More than the rest; 

But I know that, as well as for them, for me 
God did the best! 

— Helen Hunt. 

TEXTS AND TREATMENT HINTS. 

"Except Ye Be Converted and Become As Little Children.” — 
Matt. 18:3 (109). 

I. The first fact about childhood is its dependence, and the glorious 
appeal of the child spirit is felt when they act upon this dependence. 
They not only fly to our arms when distressed or afraid, they yield them- 
selves willingly to our guidance and control. Strong and thoughtful 
minds feel this fact about children with keenness even unto poignancy. 
And this is the first and last and the deepest fact in our relations to God, 
the Father of all. He sees our unlimited dependence on Him. For life 
and breath and all things, alike in the earthly and the spiritual spheres, 
we have no source to draw on but His pow r er, His wisdom, and His tender 
mercy. It is here we need to learn directness and simplicity. Our 
clouded faith, our sinful hearts, our proud independence, have separated 
us from Him by destroying this sense of dependence and the simple act 
of faith in which it is expressed. Here Jesus would have us become as 
little children, for in the kingdom of heaven it is this attitude of trust 


DEATH OF LITTLE CHILDREN. 


47 


which is perfected, this sense of dependence upon God’s fatherly grace 

for all things, which rules all thought and is the spring of all action 

II. The second fact about childhood is the simplicity of its motives. 
That, indeed, constitutes one of the great problems which parents and 
teachers meet in dealing with vigorous and happy young children. The 
one thing, the one disastrous skill they have not yet attained, is to con- 
ceal or to mix their motives. When they do begin to hide the reasons of 
conduct, or to act from a considered combination of impulses and mo- 
tives, they have already begun to enter into the sin of the human race. 
They have been caught in the net of complex moral standards, and the 
unselfish and selfish elements of life have begun to be mixed up in thoir 
cup of experience. — Pres. W. D. Mackensie, D. D., in the S. S. Times. 

“My Beloved is Gone Down to His Garden .... to Gather Lilies.”— 
Song of Solomon 6:2 (110). 

I. Children are tender plants committed to our care. 

II. Christ is the head-gardener. 

III. He gathers the blossoms when He will. 

IV. Gathered by Him they are fadeless. 

V. Shall we not permit Him to do what His love and wisdom deem best? 

“He Shall Gather the Lambs in His Arm and Carry Them In His Bosom.” 

—Isa. 40:11 (111). 

I. We mistakenly think of death as “ruthlessly snatching our little ones 

from us.” An utterly false conception, like so many other notions we 
cherish concerning death. 

II. The lessed truth is that Christ lovingly calls the children to Himself. 

III. They are forever safely beyond the reach of pain and temptation. 

IV. We may rejoin them by and by if we will. 

“Suffer the Little Children to Come Unto Me”— Luke 18:16 (112). 
Permit them to come to me: 

I. In loving devotion; the personal approach of prayer. 

II. In glad trust; and simple acts of service. 

III. In answer to the final summons; when it becomes evident that hu- 
man efforts to keep them no longer avail. 

“And the Streets of the City Shall Be Full of Boys and Girls Playing In 
the Streets Thereof.” — Zech. 8:5 (113). 

The religion of Christ makes full provision for children: 

I. In the home. Christian nurture. 

II. In the church. The emphasis given to child religion. 

HI. In heaven. Their salvation assured. 

“The Lord Gave and the Lord Hath Taken Away; Blessed Be the Name* 
of the Lord.”— Job. 1:21 (114). 

I. Both we and our children belong to God. 

II. While He has the right to dispose of us as He will, that right is al- 
ways exercised in love and never arbitrarily. 


48 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


III. Believing this we should accept his will unquestioningly. 

“They Shall Hunger No More, Neither Thirst any more; Neither Shall the 
Sun Strike Upon Them, Nor Any Heat." — Rev. 7:16 (115). 

There is a “brighter side" to bereavement, when children are called 
home. 

I. There is no question as to their eternal safety. 

II. There is certainty of escape from many earthly perils and sorrows. 
“No hunger, thirst, etc." 

III. They are still ours though absent for a little while from the fam- 
ily circle. 

“And Jesus Called to Him a Little Child.”— Matt. 18:2 (116). 

I. Childhood has no immunity from death. 

One-fourth of the race die under eight years of age, and one-half 
under eighteen. 

II. All children who go out into the other life go out in answer to Jesus’ 
call. 

III. And He stands waiting with open arms to receive them. 

A Well-Conditioned Child Illustrates the Distinctive Features of Chris- 
tian Character (117). 

I. Because he does not assert nor aggrandize himself. 

II. Because he has no memory for injuries. 

III. Because he has no pride of opinion; confesses ignorance. 

IV. Because he can imagine; and has the key to another world. — 
John Watson, M. A. 


III. DEATH IN YOUTH 


REFLECTIONS AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 

Two Sons Reunited in Death (118). 

They are not lost, but simply in another clime awaiting our coming. 
Another writes: “My friend, who is the editor of a religious journal, 
lost a son by death only a few weeks before Easter. I could not keep 
back the tears when I opened his paper, a little later, and saw in the 
lines of the editorial page, the cry of the soul of the editor. These were 
the words: “Never before was our Easter hope brighter or more com- 
forting. Never before had we greater reason to rejoice in the doctrine 
of the resurrection, nor to thank God for the evidences that it is true. The 
dead shall live again. We shall see them. We shall be with them. Our 
reunion shall be eternal.” Going on to speak about his own personal loss, 
he said, “We wept for him. We are weeping still. We think of him as 
now with his brother, who died sixteen years before him. Surely the 
Master has brought them together. They are happier than we could 
make them, and we shall be happier, when restored to them, than we 
ever could have been had they not been given to us.” 

Hope in Blossom (119). 

A traveler returned from Bermuda wrote, “I have before me a blos- 
som that was picked in the bud in Bermuda more than a fortnight ago. 
It has opened to a full flower with petals more than nine inches long, 
and a spread of six inches. It is a sweet breath from the south in these 
bleak days of spring. It is a rarer delight to see these lilies where they 
grow. Last month, when the blizzard was howling about the steeples 
of our churches, I stood at the side of a field of lilies, perhaps twenty or 
thirty acres in extent. A hundred thousand flowers were in bloom in 
that single field. The air was heavy with their perfume and the bees 
were humming from flower to flower busy with their golden harvest; 
and beyond, over the edge of the field, stretched the silver sea.” The 
writer goes on to say, “It was a picture filled with a sense of brightness 
and hope, faint image of that bright prospect which spread before the 
eyes of those disciples on their first Easter morning, when the glad mes- 
sage went hurrying from lip to lip — ‘The Lord is risen.’ ” 

Make Your Son Your Companion (120). 

My heart goes out in sincere pity to the man who cannot make a 
companion of his boys. Do you know, fathers, that you are unconsciously 
depriving yourself and your sons of the sweetest pleasures if you do not 
make them your companions? 

Think what you are doing by allowing them to grow up without 
your protecting care. Some day, perhaps, you will realize what you miss 
by not associating with them more. Be with all your children just as 


50 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


much as possible while they are little, for by so doing you will become 
young yourself and will appreciate with keener zest the good things of 
this life. 

The reason why many boys go on the wrong road is because their 
fathers maintain an indifferent attitude toward them from the time they 
are two years of age until they are eighteen or nineteen. You cannot 
reasonably expect a boy to turn out as you should like to have him if you 
take no personal interest in his welfare. I know of a father who has a 
son in whom he takes a genuine interest, and they are the closest chums 
it is possible to imagine. It is, of course, impossible for them to be to- 
gether all the time, for the father works all day at his store and the boy 
goes to school, but at night they are together. The father does not mo- 
nopolize the companionship of his son by any means, for he invites other 
boys to call at the house, and when you see them all together you can 
well imagine that there is no man about. The father enters into all the 
sports of the little fellows, who rightly aver that “he is great." That boy 
is now almost nineteen, but when he had passed the age of twelve the 
father said: 

“My, oh, my! next year you’ll be in your 'teens, and then what shall 
I do?" 

“Same as you’ve always done,” said the boy, while a dimple came in 
his cheek and a sly twinkle came to his eye. “You know we’ve pledged 
ourselves to stick together forever.” 

“So we have, so we have,” said the father, “and no matter how big 
you get, you will always be my chum.” 

That’s the way to treat your boys. — The Baptist Commonwealth. 

Diminishing Chances (121). 

The testimony of one thousand converted Sabbath-school scholars 
in the United States, Great Britain and Canada: 

128 scholars converted at age of from 8 to 12 years. 

392 scholars converted at age of from 13 to 16 years. 

322 scholars converted at age of from 17 to 20 years. 

118 scholars converted at age of from 21 to 24 years. 

40 scholars converted at age of from 25 to 60 years. 

52 per cent by age of 16. 

84 per cent by age of 20. 

96 per cent by age of 24. 

4 per cent at older ages. 

A Boy’s Mistake — A Sad Reconciliation (122). 

There was an Englishman who had an only son; and only sons are 
often petted, and humored, and ruined. This boy became very head- 
strong, and very often he and his father had trouble. One day they had 
a quarrel, and the father was very angry, and so was the son; and the 
father said he wished the boy would leave home and never come back. 
The boy said he would go, and would not come into his father’s house 
again till he sent for him. The father said he would never send for him. 


DEATH IN YOUTH 


5 * 


Well, away went the boy. But when a father gives up a boy, a mother 
does not. You mothers will understand that, but the fathers may not. 
You know there is no love on earth so strong as a mother’s love. A 
great many things may separate a man and his wife; a great 

many things may separate a father from his son; but there is noth- 

ing in the wide world that can ever separate a true mother from her 
child. To be sure, there are some mothers that have drank so much 
liquor that they have drunk up all their affection. But I am talking about 
a true mother; and she would never cast off her boy. 

Well, the mother began to write and plead with the boy to write to 
his father first, and he would forgive him; but the boy said, “I will never 
go home till father asks me.” Then she plead with the father, but the 
father said, “No, I will never ask him.” At last the mother came down 
to her sick-bed, broken-hearted, and when she was given up by the phy- 
sician to die, the husband, anxious to gratify her last wish, wanted to 

know if there was something he could do for her before she died. The 
mother gave him a look; he well knew what it meant. Then she said, 
“Yes, there is one thing you can do. You can send for my boy. That is 
the only wish on earth you can gratify. If you do not pity him and love 
him when I am dead and gone, who will?” “Well,” said the father, “I 
will send word to him that you want to see him.” “No,” she says, “you 
know he will not come for me. If ever I see him you must send for 
him.” 

At last the father went to his office and wrote a dispatch in his own 
name, asking the boy to come home. As soon as he got the invitation 
from his father he started off to see his dying mother. When he opened 
the door to go in he found his mother dying, and his father by the bed- 
side. The father heard the door open, and saw the boy, but instead of 
going to meet him, he went to another part of the room, and refused to 
speak to him. His mother seized his hand — how she had longed to press 
it! She kissed him, and then said, “Now, my son, just speak to your 
father. You speak first, and it will all be over.” But the boy said, “No, 
mother, I will not speak to him until he speaks to me.” She took her 
husband’s hand in one hand and the boy’s in the other, and spent her 
dying moments in trying to bring about a reconciliation. Then just as 
she was expiring — she could not speak — so she put the hand of the way- 
ward boy into the hand of the father, and passed away! The boy looked 
at the mother, and the father at the wife, and at last the father’s heart 
broke, and he opened his arms, and took that boy to his bosom, and by 
that body they were reconciled. Sinner, that is only a faint type, a poor 
illustration, because God is not angry with you. 

I bring you tonight to the dead body of Christ. I ask you to look at 
the wounds in his hands and feet, and the wound in his side. And I ask 
you, “Will you not be reconciled?” — Moody. 

A Boy’s Religion (123). 

I was standing before the window of an art store, where a picture 
of the crucifixion of our Lord was on exhibition; as I gazed I was con- 
scious of the approach of another, and turning beheld a little lad gazing 


52 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


intently at the picture also. Noticing that this mite of humanity was a 
sort of street Arab, I thought I would speak to him; so I asked, pointing 
to the picture, ‘Do you know who it is?’ ‘Yes,’ came the quick response. 
‘That’s our Saviour,’ with a mingled look of pity and surprise that I 
should not know. With an evident desire to enlighten me further, he 
continued, after a pause, ‘Them’s the soldiers, the Roman soldiers,’ and 
with a long-drawn sigh. ‘That woman crying there is His mother.’ He 
waited, apparently for me to question him further, thrust his hands into 
his pockets, and with a reverent and subdued voice, added, ‘They killed 
Him, Mister. Yes, sir, they killed Him!’ I looked at the little ragged fel- 
low and asked, ‘Where did you learn this?’ He replied, ‘At the Mission 
Sunday-school.’ Full of thought regarding the benefits of Mission Sun- 
day-schools I turned away and resumed my walk, leaving the little lad 
looking at the picture. I had not walked a block when I heard his child- 
ish treble calling ‘Mister! Say, mister!’ I turned. He was running 
toward me, but paused; then up went his little hand and with triumph- 
ant sound in voice he said, ‘I wanted to tell you He rose again! Yes, 
mister, He rose again.” — Sel. 

A Lofty Life Purpose (125). 

A true, lofty life may be lived with a very small modicum. There 
is no proportion between wealth and happiness, nor between wealth 
and nobleness. The fairest life ever lived on earth was that of a poor 
man, and with all its beauty it moved within the limits of narrow re- 
sources. The loveliest blossoms do not grow on plants that plunge 
their greedy roots into the fattest soil. A little light earth in the crack 
of a hard rock will do. We need enough for the physical being to root 
itself in; we need no more. 

Young men! especially you who are plunged into the busy life of our 
great commercial centres, and are tempted by everything you see, and 
by most that you hear, to believe that a prosperous trade and hard cash 
are the realities, and all else mist and dreams, fix this in your mind to 
begin life with — God is the reality, all else is shadow. Do not make it your 
ambition to get on; but to get up. Having food and raiment, let us be 
content. Seek for your life’s delight and treasure, in thought, in truth, 
in pure affections, in moderate desires, in a spirit set on God. These are 
the realities of our possessions. As for all the rest, it is sham and 
show. — Alexander Maclaren, D. D. 

Remember Thy Creator In Youth (126). 

A lady came to Dr. Chalmers and said: “Doctor, I cannot bring my 
child to Christ. I’ve talked, and talked, but it’s of no use.” The Doctor 
thought she had not much skill, and said, “Now you be quiet and I will 
talk to her alone.” When the Doctor got the Scotch lassie alone he said 
to her, “They are bothering you a good deal about this question; now 
suppose I just tell your mother you don’t want to be talked to any more 
upon this subject for a year. How will that do?” Well, tt*> Scotch lassie 
hesitated a little, and then said she “didn’t think it would be safe to wait 
for a year. Something might turn up. She might die before then.” 


DEATH IN YOUTH 


53 


“Well, that’s so,” replied the doctor, “but suppose we say six months.” 
She didn’t think even this would be safe. “That’s so,” was the doctor’s 
reply; “well, let us say three months.” After a little hesitation, the girl 
finally said, “I don’t think it would be safe to put it off for three months 
— don’t think it would be safe to put it off at all,” and they went down 
on their knees and found Christ. 

Youth’s Opportunities (127). 

The young can come to Christ easily; for those whose youth is past 
it is frequently difficult. Dr. Wilton Merle Smith, in his recent book of 
sermons, aptly says: “The little ones come easily. Childhood is all 
defenseless against heaven, but it is harder for the growing boy, still 
harder for yonder man just crossing the threshold of manhood. With 
every added year the weight of sin increases, and harder is it for the 
grace of God to draw the soul to itself. By and by such may become the 
weight of sin that omnipotence cannot move it. Yes, my friends, it is 
vastly easier to come to the Master now, than by and by. Childhood is 
the open door, youth the closing gateway, manhood the barricaded en- 
trance. Not long ago, in a company of Christians, where more than a 
hundred were gathered, we took a ballot. It was found that three-quar- 
ters of them had been converted before twenty-one years of age, and 
nine-tenths of them before twenty-five. It is a momentous truth that 
the chances for conversion in after life, young men, decrease inversely 
as the square of the years.” 

Youth's Need of Christ (128). 

A company of hunters were eating their lunch up in the Scotch 
highlands when one of them spied, on the face of a great precipice oppo- 
site, a sheep on a narrow ledge of rock. He pointed it out to the rest, and 
one of the guides explained that the sheep had been tempted by the 
sight of green grass to jump down to some ledge a foot or two from the 
top of the cliff. Soon, having eaten all the grass there, and unable to get 
back, there was nothing else for it to do but scramble down to some lower 
ledge; there in turn it would finish what might be there and have to 
jump to some ledge yet lower. 

“Now it has got to the last,” said he, looking through the field 
glass and seeing that below it went the steep cliff without a break for 
two or three hundred feet. 

“What will happen to it now?” asked the others eagerly. “Oh, now 
it will be lost! The eagles will see it and swoop down upon it, and, 
maddened with fright and hunger, it will leap over the cliff and be 
dashed to pieces on the rocks below.” 

Is it not just like that that a soul goes astray? A man is tempted to 
partake of the pleasures that are on the ledge just a little lower than the 
high tableland of moral life on which he has lived. Do some of you not 
know what it means? It is only a little way down, so you think, to that 
show of pleasure or seeming gain, attractive as the show of green grass 
was to the sheep, you expected to go right back, but it is easier to go down 


54 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


to the next ledge than it is to get hack, and so down you ko, like King 
Saul and like the lost sheep. One year, two years pass away and your 
heart becomes harder and more indifferent than you thought possible for 
you. 

Do not despair, even though you are on the last ledge, the Good 
Shepherd is hunting for you. He has left the ninety and nine in the 
wilderness and has come out over the bleak mountains of sin seeking for 
you. If you will heed his voice, he will lift you again to the highlands 
of peace and joy. He, and He alone, can save you. — Rev. Geo. B. Gray. 

What To Live For (129). 

To be a young man on the right side of the King; to be clothed in 
the faultless righteousness of Christ, to get a commission straight from 
the throne of God, to be crowned unto manhood’s completeness by Jesus, 
and thus to do life’s work — that w r ill be to make no failure. It will be 
to have done some good here. It will be to find a welcome yonder. 

‘‘There’s a fount about to stream. 

There’s a light about to gleam. 

There’s a midnight darkness changing into day; 1 
Men of thought, and men of action, clear the way.” 

— The Young Man Fair-Squaw, 

Dare to Be Religious (130). 

Young men, dare to be religious, in the finest, loftiest, grandest 
meaning of that word. Don’t allow yourselves to be laughed out of your 
reverence for the word of God and the piety of your father and mother. 
Don’t consider it a disgrace to be called “good.” Don’t be coaxed and 
wheedled and seduced into forbidden sins. Have some courage. If you 
can do no more, do as Luther did at the Diet of Worms, when he said, 
“Here I stand, I can do naught else. God help me. Amen!” 

The gospel is in sympathy with young men. That scene at the tomb 
of Jesus settles that. Therefore have a stout heart, and dare to be 
religious. 

What sort of religion are you to strive for? There are many brands; 
Let yours be a manly religion. Don’t let it degenerate into cant. Don’t 
let it melt down into mushy sentimentalism. Don’t let it die away into 
a starveling rite, the naked bones of formalism and ritual. Don’t let it 
lapse into a moss-grown, mildewed theology. Let it be sincere and 
straightforward. Let it be clear-cut and stalwart. Let it be sympathetic 
and tender. Let it fine-grained and broad-brained. Let it be rich, full, 
free, divine. — Rev. James E. Vance, D. D. 

Christian Culture (131). 

You are rich, and your children may inherit your riches. You are 
talented, and your children may inherit your talents. But you cannot 
convey to them by will your education, or your principles, or your re- 
ligion. These are to be impressed upon them, not by one act, but by the 


DEATH IN YOUTH 


55 


constant persevering efforts of your daily life. But under “the grace of 
God” they may become, and they will become, what you most desire them 
to be and in nine cases out of ten will be reprints of yourselves. Learn, 
then, to “show piety at home.” 

A Father’s Tribute to His Son (132). 

[Edward Leigh Pell, Jr., firstborn son of Dr. Edward Leigh Pell, 
of Richmond, Va., a youth of brilliant mind and rare promise, died on 
September 15, 1910. His father, confined to his bed by sickness, dictated 
the following tribute, which was read at the funeral by the officiating 
minister.] 

The world has no room for a boy. He is too rough for its taste, and 
in his awkwardness he often rubs it the wrong way. We treasure our 
men, our women, and our girls, but we only tolerate our boys — tolerate 
them with the hope that they will soon cease to be boys. 

But a boy is like a cocoanut brought to us fresh from the tree, en- 
veloped in its great shaggy covering. The goodness is all within, and you 
must crack its very heart to find it. You never know what is in the heart 
of a boy until it has been cracked by some hard vicissitude of life. 

When I was taken sick my boy squared his frail shoulders to bear 
his father’s burdens. Day after day he went to the office and tried to 
take his father’s place; and when they gave him business worries to 
bring home, he would often hide them in his pocket and meet his father 
with a smiling face. His father should not be worried. 

One day he came home in pain and laid down his work. When they 
were about to take him away to the hospital, I went to him and said: 
“My boy, you know I have always loved you with all my heart.” 

“And I have loved you with all my heart too,” he replied; “but 
papa, don’t worry; I don’t mind the operation. I am only afraid you 
will worry and it will make you worse. Don’t worry, papa.” 

And day after day there came a message of love from the hospital 
with its admonition not to worry. 

When at last he began to realize that he must go, he sent for me. 

“God has been good to us,” I said to him, “and we can trust Him.” 

“I am trusting Him,” he said. 

“We’ve had lots of good times together, my boy, and we are going to 
have many more; for I am coming to you, and we shall live together 
forever.” 

And he gave my hand a squeeze that broke my heart. 

At the last moment, while talking to his mother, his brilliant mind 
as clear as it had ever been in all his life, he looked up suddenly and 
exclaimed: “They are coming.” 

“Who are coming, my child?” asked the mother. 

“O, the angels, the angels! I see them!” 

“And won’t you come for me, my boy?” asked the mother. 

“Yes, yes. Good-by, good-by, good-by.” 

'And he passed within the veil as peacefully as a babe drops to sleep 
on its mother’s breast. 


56 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


This is what I found in the heart of my hoy. Perhaps you will find 
it in the heart of your hoy too — when it has been cracked. — Christian 
Advocate. 

A Father's Mistake (133). 

There is a little story that has gone the round of the American press 
that made a great impression upon me as a father. A father took his 
little child out into the field one Sabbath, and, it being a hot day, he lay 
down under a beautiful shady tree. The little child ran about gathering 
wild flowers and little blades of grass, and coming to its father and say- 
ing, “Pretty! pretty!” At last the father fell asleep, and while he was 
sleeping the little child wandered away. When he awoke, his first thought 
was, “Where is my child?” He looked all around, but he could not see 
him. He shouted at the top of his voice, but all he heard was the echo 
of his own voice. Running to a little hill, he looked around and shouted 
again. No response! Then going to a precipice at some distance, he 
looked down, and there, upon the rocks and briars, he saw the mangled 
form of his loved child. He rushed to the spot, took up the lifeless 
corpse, and hugged it to his bosom, and accused himself of being the 
murderer of his child. While he was sleeping the child had wandered 
over the precipice. I thought as I heard that, what a picture of the 
church of God! 

How many fathers and mothers, how many Christian men, are sleep- 
ing now while their children wander over the terrible precipice right 
into the bottomless pit. Father, where is your boy to-night?” — Moody. 

Just Away (134). 

“I cannot say and I will not say 
That he is dead, he is just away. 

With a cheery smile and a wave of his hand 
He has wandered into another land.” 

He himself had gone upon the journey of all days. Yet his things still 
lay about the house, his favorite tennis racket, the old red sweater, darned 
in several places with wool of a lighter shade, the leaky fountain pen on 
his desk, the bunch of keys fallen from a jacket pocket onto the closet 
floor, all these stung us like poisoned arrows. “If you can stand the 
first smart of seeing them around,” said one who was wise in sorrow, 
“they will comfort you by and by.” I believe the dear dumb things kept 
our grief wholesome and clean like the wound which the surgeon opens 
daily that it may heal better later on. We named him tremulously at 
first, but by and by we told over his jokes and pet sayings with a bitter- 
sweet mirth, we learned to smile bravely into the picture of the gay, boy- 
ish face and in our family plans to consider what he would have wished. 
In short, to act as if he was “just away.” 

We had taken scant interest in another land while our family circle 
was unbroken. Now we scanned eagerly every scrap of verse, sermon, 
or book which dealt with a “Beyond.” We demanded immortality for 
our own, but learned as bitterly as weeping Eve, or sorrowing David of 


DEATH IN YOUTH 


57 


old that human knowledge has no key to the door of the Hereafter. 
Then when we had vainly explored all other paths, we found God upon 
the Hills of Prayer. We were comforted. There is no word tender or 
blessed enough in human speech to explain how. All that we can sol- 
emnly affirm is that the great majestic presence of the Father abides 
upon those everlasting hills. 

We learned there that our beloved was safe in God’s keeping. Wher- 
ever he may abide, it is well with him. Our fluttering hearts whisper 
that he still thinks and yearns for us, though among the heavenly man- 
sions. He is “just away,” a little nearer to God than we. We must walk 
worthily that we too may draw nearer. Sometimes we wonder in our 
blundering way if we have guessed the meaning of his swift departure 
from us? Perhaps it was because God desired to make Himself known 
unto us. — The Congregationalist. 

The Next Room (135). 

“Those who are gone from you, you have. Those who departed 
loving you, love you still, and you love them always. They are not really 
gone, those dear hearts and true, they are only gone into the next room 
and you will probably get up and follow them and yonder doors will 
close upon you and you will be no more seen.” — Thackeray. 


ILLUSTRATIVE VERSES. 
They Walt For Us (136). 


There are pictures in our river — 
Pictures full of wondrous beauty — 
Of the trees that bend above it, 
Of the cloudlets floating o’er it. 
Of the western sun and sky, 

Of the mountains dark and high; 
And our hearts are thrilled and 
glowing 

As we stand and see it flowing — 
Coming, going, 

In its wondrous beauty flowing, 
Flowing to the Inland Sea. 
Standing on the bridge above it, 
Gazing out upon the sea, 


How our thoughts are with it flow- 
ing. 

Going, flowing 

Far beyond the Inland Sea, 

Out into the world beyond us, 
Where the dear ones who have 
loved us 

Work and wait — 

Work with us to “tell the story” 

Of the love and power and glory 
Of the mighty God above us 
And the Christ who died to save 
us; 

Wait with us the world’s redemp- 
v tion. 

And the coming of our King. 


A Buried Seed (137). 

Two thousand years ago a flower 
Bloomed brightly in a far-off land; 

Two thousand years ago its seed 
Was placed within a dead man’s hand. 


68 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


Suns rose and set, years came and went; 

That dead hand kept its treasure well;] 
Nations were born and turned to dust, 

While life was hidden in that shell. 

The senseless hand is robbed at last; 

The seed is buried in the earth. 

When, lo! the life long sleeping there 
Into a lovely flower burst forth. 

And will not He who watched the seed. 

And kept the life within the shell. 

When those He loves are laid to rest, 
Watch o’er His buried saints as well? 

And will not He from ’neath the sod 
Cause something glorious to arise? 

Ay, though it sleeps two thousand years. 

Yet all this slumbering dust shall rise. 

Then will I lay me down in peace, 

When called to leave this vale of tears; 
For “in my flesh shall I see God,” 

E’en though I sleep two thousand years. 

— Sarah H. Bradford. 

The Breaking Day (138). 

We may hope with an undying hope 
Since He who knows our need is just. 

That somewhere, somehow, meet we must. 

Alas for him who never sees 

The stars shine through his cypress trees; 

Who hopeless lays his dead away, 

Nor looks to see the breaking day 
Across the mournful marble play: 

Who hath not learned in hours of faith 
The truth to sight and sense unknown. 

That life is ever lord of death, 

And love can never lose its own. 

New Life (139). 

Only a little shriveled seed — 

It might be a flower or grass or weed; 

Only a box of dirt on the edge 
Of a narrow, dusty window-ledge; 

Only a few scant summer showers; 

Only a few clear, shining hours — 

That was all. Yet God could make 
Out of these, for a sick child’s sake, 

A blossom-wonder as fair and sweet 
As ever broke at an angel’s feet. 


DEATH IN YOUTH 


59 


Only a life of barren pain. 

Wet with sorrowful tears for rain; 

Warmed sometimes by a wandering gleam 
Of joy that seemed but a happy dream. 

A life as common and brown and bare 
As the box of earth in the window there;] 

Yet it bore at last the precious bloom 
Of a perfect soul in a narrow room — 

Pure as the snowy leaves that fold 
Over the flower’s heart of gold. 

— Henry Van Dyke. 

Death Gaining an Entrance for Faith (140). 

“Hearts that the preacher could not touch. 

By wayside graves are raised; 

And lips cry, ‘God be merciful!’ 

That ne’er cried, ‘God be praised!*” 

He Lives (141). 

“He lives — in all the past 
He lives; nor to the last 
Of seeing him again will I despair. 

In dreams I see him now. 

And on his angel brow 
I see it written, ‘Thou shalt see me there.*** 

God Knows Why (142). 

Gods knows why — 

Alas! not we — that out of all this surging tide 
He stepped aside 

Into quiet so profound before his time. 

Not a rhyme 

Of the lyric, labor, ever shall he sing — ■ 

Never bring 

Any hard-won guerdon — rare reward of life — 

Out of strife. 

Here he lies — we loved him — and we leave him here. 
Some bright sphere 

Has made room, we know, to take our wanderer in. 
He shall win 

Otherwhere what God had meant for him — and so 
While the snow 

Beats and blows about his early grave, we’ll say: 
“Far away 

Safe and strong his life goes on at God’s behest, 

And God knows best.” 

— Luella Clark. 


60 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


Shall We Find Them at the Portals? (143). 

Will they meet us, cheer and greet us, 

Those we’ve loved, who’ve gone before? 

Shall we find them at the portals. 

Find our beautified immortals, 

When we reach that radiant shore? 

Hearts are broken for some token, 

That they live and love us yet; 

And we ask, “Can those who’ve left us, 

Of love’s look and tone bereft us, 

Though in Heaven, can they forget ?” 

And we often, as days soften, 

And comes out the evening star. 

Looking westward, sit and wonder 
Whether when so far asunder, 

They still know how dear they are? 

Past yon portals, our immortals, 

Those who walk with Him in white, 

Do they, mid their bliss recall us. 

Know they what events befall us, 

Will our coming wake delight? 

They will meet us, cheer and greet us, 

Those we’ve loved who’ve gone before; 

We shall find them at the portals, 

Find our beautified immortals, 

When we reach that radiant shore. 

Watching at the Gate (144). 

The little hands are folded like white lilies on his breast, 

The busy feet, so noisy once, are evermore at rest; 

The snow drift of his little bed is stainless, smooth and still. 
As if waiting for the laddie back, his cozy place to fill; 

The hobby-horse is saddled, and gives forth a hearty neigh, 

But the rider does not heed it, for he is far away. 

He is dwelling with the angels, and, though I may be late, 

I know he’ll not forget me, but be watching at the gate. 

His toys are laid upon the shelf, his clothes are put away, 
The little rug is folded up, on which he knelt to pray; 

His empty chair is by the hearth, as if expecting him, 

And when I see that vacant chair my eyes with tears are dim. 
I listen, wait, and listen for a voice that never calls. 

For a step along the hallway, but the footstep never falls. 

But this comfort I have always, that though I may be late, 

I know he’ll not forget me, but be watching at the gate. 


* 


DEATH IN YOUTH 


61 


His grave is on the prairie, where sweet clover blossoms grow. 
Where the sky is clear and open, and the fragrant zephyrs blow; 
Kind trees are bending o’er it, as if God had placed them there 
To guard where he is sleeping with a never ceasing care. 

Oh, my heart is aching, breaking, while I am waiting for the 
bliss 

Of the sweetness and the rapture of his gladsome smile and kiss. 
But this thought cheers me always, that though I may be late, 

I know he’ll not forget me, but be watching at the gate. 

— Rev. Campbell Coyle, D. D. 

The Best Is Yet To Be (145). 

The best is yet to be, 

The last of life for which the first was made: 

Our times are in His hand, 

Who saith: “A whole I planned, 

Youth shows but half: trust God; see all, nor be afraid. 

Our Own (146). 

Our own are our own forever; God taketh not back His gift; 

They may pass beyond our vision, but our souls shall find them out 
When the waiting is all accomplished, and the deathly shadows lift, 

And glory is given for grieving, and the surety of God for doubt. 

We may find the waiting bitter, and count the silence long; 

God knoweth we are dust, and He pitieth our pain; 

And when faith has grown to fulness, and the silence changed to spng, 
We shall eat the fruit of patience, and shall hunger not again. 

So sorrowing hearts who humbly in darkness and all alone 
Sit missing a dear lost presence and the joy of a vanished day, 

Be comforted with this message, that our own are forever our own, 

And God, who gave the gracious gift. He takes it never away. 

— Susan Coolidge. 

TEXTS AND TREATMENT HINTS. 

“Remember Thy Creator in the Days of Thy Youth." — Ec. 12:1 (147). 

1. God has a right to our entire and lifelong service. 

2. God has a right to our constant love and gratitude. 

3. God has a right to be glorified in us. 

4. It is net a reasonable thing that we should give God the mere dregs 
of our life. — Rev. Thos. H. Leale. 


62 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


“Her Sun is Gone Down While It Is Yet Day.”— Jer. 15:9 (148). 

1. Nature has her fixed times and seasons. 

2. Death has no seasons. It strikes down youth and age alike. 

3. In the present instance this is illustrated. Youth, glowing in the 

flush of early promise is cut down. 

4. Be ready, for in such hour as ye think not, the Bridegroom cometh. 

“If Thou Hadst Been Here, My Brother Had Not Died.” — John 11:21 (149). 

We learn: 

I. That the friends of Jesus are not exempted from affliction in the 
world. If such immunity might have been expected in any case, it surely 
would have been in that of the members of the Bethany family who so 
often received and entertained the Lord. In the highest sacrificial sense 
of the word, no one ever suffered for others as Christ did; but in a lower 
sense it is true that believers often do suffer for others; and w r hen their 
benefit is secured thereby, the afflicted ones discover that their sickness 
has really been for the glory of God, so that they enter in a very real way 
into the fellowship of the Saviour’s sufferings. 

II. The friends of Jesus in their affliction turn directly and imme- 
diately to Him. In the day of prosperity it may be occasionally difficult 
to say whether a man is a Christian or not; but when, in time of trouble 
he makes straight for Christ, we know then most surely whose he is and 
whom he serves. Take a note of it then, and when affliction comes, ob- 
serve to whom you flee for succor — for that will tell you whether you 
are, or are not, a friend of Jesus. 

III. The response of the Lord comes often in such a way as seems 
to aggravate the evil. Christ loved the family at Bethany, therefore He 
did not come immediately at their call. “That looks like a non-sequitur, 
but it is the sober truth. He had in store for them a greater kindness 
than they could have dreamed of; and therefore He delayed till He could 
confer that upon them. There is nothing for us at such a time but to 
wait in patient, trustful expectation; but when we get to the end we shall 
see that there was love in the discipline. 

IV. The friends of Jesus have different individualities but a common 
danger in their sorrow. In all our trials we are prone to lose sight of 
the universality of God’s providence, and to torment ourselves with this 
unbelieving “if.” It proceeds on the principle that the providence of 
God is not concerned in everything, and it gives to secondary causes a 
supremacy that does not belong to them. When calamity comes upon 
you, be sure that it is not because this or that accident prevented relief, 
nor because the Saviour was not with you, but because it was His will, 
and His will only, to bring about that which shall be better for you and 
others than your deliverance would have been. 

V. The friends of Jesus have a blessed end to all their sorrows. 
“Rest in the Lord, therefore, and wait patently for Him.” — Rev. W. M. 
Taylor, D. D. 


DEATH IN YOUTH 


ca 


“Our Friend Lazarus Sleepeth.” — John 11:11 (150). 

Thoughts of death are suited to do us good. It is well that we should 
consider now, while yet life may be granted us, our latter end. It is well, 
when by any cause, either in the outward look of nature, or from what 
may happen within our homes, we are called off from taking thought 
only of present things — of what we shall eat, what we shall drink, where- 
withal we shall be clothed — and constrained to face the most distant 
future; constrained to look into the darkness of the grave, and to ques- 
tion ourselves, each for himself, as to our preparation and as to our 
readiness to die. 

I. “Our friend Lazarus sleepeth.” That is the way in which Jesus 
spoke of death. He called it by no harsher word than sleep. Christ 
cannot mislead us, and He calls the death of His friend sleep. Let us not 
fear to lean upon His words for ourselves, for our companions; let this 
henceforth be the idea which we attach to death, “Our friend sleepeth.” 
His toil is ended, his sorrows are ended, his pains are ended; he is out of 
the reach of the miseries of the sinful world. And when we say this, 
let us carry on our thoughts further. Death is sleep, but sleep implies 
an awakening. And this awakening, what is it to the Christian but the 
resurrection — the rising again of our body, the going back of the spirit; 
the fitting of the whole man to be an inheritor of everlasting life? 

II. Note here a lesson (1) of warning, and that is, to be prepared 
for death and judgment — to live now, so that we may be ready at any 
moment to depart. Be no more putters off, but performers of your Lord’s 
will. Think how any day, any hour, His words may be heard. 
Think how soon that night cometh in which no work may be done, 
in which to repent and amend will be no longer possible. (2) A lesson 
of comfort. At the appointed time Christ will come and awaken His 
friends, that where He is there also may His true servants be. — Rev. R. 
D. B. Raunsley. 

“And Daniel Gave Thanks Before His God As He Did Aforetime.”— 

Daniel 6:10 (151). 

Dr. James Stalker described a “young man’s religion” as: 

I. Not merely a creed but an experience. 

II. Not merely a restraint, but an inspiration. 

III. Not merely an insurance for the next, but a program for this 
world. 


“How Long Have I To Live?” — 2 Sam. 19:34 (152). 

This is a useful question for every man to put to himself. In the 
little time that remained to Barzillai he could find no enjoyment in 
eating and drinking, even at the king’s table. There are many things 
in life which are not worth doing because the time is so short. If we 
could guarantee that our life should be continued for a century, we could 
arrange our affairs accordingly; but as our breath is in our nostrils, and 
as no man may boast of to-morrow, it is of infinite importance to regulate 


64 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


our plans in the light of that depressing fact. The meditation upon this 
text might run somewhat as follows: (1) How long have I to live that I 
may make the best of what remains? To make the best of an hour is 
to multiply its opportunities. (2) How long have I to live, that I may set 
my house in order? We should not leave the world in an unprepared 
state. Every man has some responsibilities which he should adjust 
whilst in comparative health. (3) How long have I to live, that I may do 
the most important things first? There is always an order of import- 
ance. To the husbandman it is of more importance at the proper season 
that he should sow his seed rather than clean his windows. On a ship 
it is more important to have a qualified captain than a qualified cook. 
(4) How long have I to live, that I may pay all I owe? This inquiry does 
not relate to money only. We may be solvent in money and insolvent in 
character. What do we owe to those who love us? To our children? To 
the poor? To the whole cause of Christ? We are not to buy ourselves 
off by money; a subscription is not a soul. 

What is it to live? It is not merely to exist. Men are not bodies 
only. A man may feed his body and starve his soul. When a man asks 
questions about his life he should bring them to bear upon his spiritual 
rather than upon his corporeal nature. There is a mockery of living. 
We may live without living, that is to say, our life may be only physical, 
or it may be shallow, or it may be selfish, or it may be running on false 
lines. The true life is in Christ alone. In every sense He is our life. 
Unless we are in Christ w r e have no life. He came to give us life. He 
complains, “Ye will not come unto me that ye might have life.” 

The question may be used in another and most thrilling sense. The 
question of the text relates only to earthly existence. The Christian 
preacher has a great answer to the inquiry, How long have I to live? 
The Christian preacher’s answer is, forever! — Joseph Parker, D. D. 


IV. DEATH OF THE MATURE. PARENTS, 
HUSBAND AND WIFE. 

REFLECTIONS AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 

His Mother’s Bible (153). 

A Bible class teacher was telling of the various translations of the 
Bible and their different excellences. The class was much interested, 
and one of the young men that evening was talking to a friend about it. 

“I think I prefer the King James version for my part,” he said; 
“though, of course, the revised is more scholarly.” 

His friend smiled. “I prefer my mother’s translation of the Bible 
myself to any other version,” he said. 

“Your mother’s?” cried the first young man, thinking his companion 
had suddenly gone crazy. “What do you mean, Fred?” 

“I mean that my mother has translated the Bible into the language 
of daily life for me ever since I was old enough to understand it. She 
translates it straight, too, and gives its full meaning. There has never 
been any obscurity about her version. Whatever printed version of the 
Bible I may study, my mother’s is always the one that clears up my diffi- 
culties.” — Selected. 


Our Mothers (154). 

A little boy named Sydney presented a bill to his mother one morn- 
ing. It was worded something like this: “Mother owes Sydney, for 
running errands, 4d.; for being good, 6d.” Various other items brought 
the amount to a grand total of eighteen pence. The mother quietly took 
the bill, and on the following morning she placed it, with one-and-six- 
pence, on Sydney’s plate. But with it was another bill: “Sydney owes 
mother, for the years of happiness, nothing; for nursing him through 
his last long illness, nothing; for being good to him, nothing.” Other 
notes were added, and the grand account was nothing. The boy read 
the bill. Tears filled his eyes, and he rushed hastily to his mother, and 
flung himself into her arms, crying brokenly, “Oh, mother, let me love 
you, and do things for you for nothing.” — Dr. R. F. Horton. 

Remembering Our Dead (155) 

Our dead do not die, until we kill them by forgetfulness. They live 
on in us and through us, even as we shall live in posterity. 
We are a heap of possibilities coming from the past, a mass 
of influence for the future. The continuous chain of good and evil knows 
no break, except we strengthen the latter and destroy the former. The 
immortal influence of example knows no interruption. The past is linked 
to the present; the future is prepared in the now. In this sense 
our loved ones never die, for they live in hearts and lives left behind. 
In moments of sacred joy, in hours of hallowed sorrow they beckon us 


66 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


on to love and duty. In times of trial and temptation, of success and 
failure, they stand out before our mental gaze. Once again we feel the 
pressure of the hand that gave childhood’s blessing; once again their lips 
meet ours in the kiss of hope; once again we hear their voices uttering 
words of counsel or comfort, and by the purity of our lives, by the nobility 
of our deeds, by the honesty of our acts, we prove that, being dead, they 
yet speak. — Levy. 

A Mother’s Heart-sway (156). 

But how the true mother holds her heart-sway even when the chil- 
dren are grown! Other loves and trusts and confidences come, but still the 
grown child sings: 

“Over my head in the days that are flown 
No love like mother-love ever was shown. 

No other worship abides and endures, 

Loving, unselfish and patient like yours. 

None like a mother can charm away pain 
From the sick brow and world weary brain. 

Slumber’s soft calm o’er my heavy lids creep! 

Rock me to sleep, mother! Rock me to sleep!” 

And there is this consolation for all who have known what it was to 
worship and find help at the shrine of a fond mother’s heart: it was God 
in the mother’s heart that drew the adoration. Her fond bosom was the 
inlet into which the great tide of divine love surged and kept it always 
full. “That he might be everywhere present, God made mothers.” — Sel. 

His Mother’s Influence (157). 

It was after a hush in the midweek meeting that one who was a 
stranger to the majority broke the stillness, as he arose to his feet, 
saying: 

“If anyone had told me this morning that I would attend prayer 
meeting here to-night I would have questioned his sanity, but here I am, 
and right glad that I came.” 

Then, glancing over the congregation, he continued: “I see but 
two or three familiar faces, and that is not strange, for I was a youth 
when I worshiped here, and now I am past middle age. But this is the 
very pew where hundreds of times I sat beside my sainted mother.” 

From the pause that followed it was evident thatTthe vivid memory 
of long gone days prevented speech, but when he had himself well in 
hand the stranger continued: 

“Those of you who remember what a mother I had will, I am sure, 
bear me out in the statement that she lived so near her Lord that her 
influence was far-reaching. Anyhow, I have never been able to get away 
from it, although she was taken from me thirty years ago. To be sure, 
I had not honored my Lord as did she — far from it, but whenever during 
these motherless years, I have been tempted to stray from the path of 
rectitude I have been preventd by her restraining influence. And if you 
will bear with me, I will tell you why I am here to-night. 


DEATH OF THE MATURE. PARENTS, HUSBAND AND WIFE. 67 


“Now, I do not give it as an excuse, for, somehow, in the pew where 
she stood so many times to testify for her Lord, I am not in a mood to 
excuse myself, but, like many another, I have allowed business cares to 
fully engross my time and thoughts of late, as to well-nigh crowd out 
preparations for the higher life. 

“But this morning as I was sitting at my desk, puzzling over a dis- 
crepancy in accounts, I glanced outward and saw across the street the 
figure of a passing stranger who reminded me of mother. And then the 
memory of the best friend I ever had so overcame me that I saw the 
ledger through misty eyes, and soon my head was pillowed upon it.” 

There was another pause, and then, in a choked voice, he continued: 

“Memory’s curtains were drawn wide, as thus I sat, and among half- 
forgotten scenes I saw myself a child again, in this very pew, with 
mother at my side, and I felt — gray-headed man that I am — that such 
sweet memories were worth more to me than any amount of bank stock. 

“Then, somehow, I felt as if mother wanted me to come here to- 
night and take a fresh start heavenward, and so I came thirty miles to 
attend this prayer meeting. Some of my hearers may take exceptions 
to the statement I am about to make, but, be that as it may, I confess 
that I came here to-night because I felt that mother would know it — and 
be glad! 

“Yes,” added he, “mother’s influence brought me here, but I see now 
that it was only that I might catch so lasting a glimpse of the Father as 
to enable me in the future to be less absorbed in transitory things.” 

From the breathless silence that followed it was evident that all 
felt that the foregoing touching remarks were a fitting close to the 
meeting. And the pastor said, as he rose to offer a closing prayer: 

“I am sure you will all feel like joining with me in thanking God, 
anew, for the influence of a Christian mother.” — Helena H. Thomas in 
Endeavor World. 


The God of the Fatherless (158). 

That God is “the God of the widow and of the fatherless” is abund- 
antly confirmed by even a brief biographical survey. There have been 
famous men who were sons of famous fathers, as, for instance, John 
Stuart Mill, son of James Mill; Thomas Babington Macaulay, son of 
Zachary Macaulay; William Pitt, son of Lord Chatham; John Quincy 
Adams, son of John Adams; Henry Ward Beecher, son of Lyman 
Beecher; and many more who might be mentioned, not to include in the 
list other famous men whose fathers played an important part in their 
heritage and education. But there is a world of comfort, suggestion and 
inspiration in the fact that so many “widows’ sons” have played such a 
large part in the history of the world. — Robert Whitaker. 

The Christian's Death. (159) — What Belfrage says of John is true 
of the departure of every believer. It is not like the evening star sink- 
ing into the darkness of the night, but like the morning star, lost to our 
view in the brightness of day. 


68 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


Reunited Later On (160). 

The wife of Charles Kingsley erected a marble cross on the grave 
of her husband, and on it she had these three words engraven: Amavi- 
mus, Amamus, Amabimus. We have loved, we love, we shall love. When 
Mrs. Browning died, her husband, taking from Dante these words, wrote 
them in her Testament: “Thus I believe, thus I affirm, thus I am cer- 
tain of it, that from this life I shall pass to another better, there, where 
that holy lady lives, of whom my soul was enamored.” Will God permit 
a hope like this to die? I do not have Christ’s authority for the thought 
that we shall know each other beyond death, or that we shall be to each 
other what we were here, but to think otherwise would be contrary to 
the hope of millions. “Love never faileth,” and Jesus Himself has said 
“If it were not so I would have told you.” — Sel. 

A Voice From the Tomb (161). 

The other day I read of a mother who died, leaving her child alone 
and very poor. She used to pray earnestly for her boy, and left an im- 
pression upon his mind that she cared more for his soul than she cared 
for anything else in the world. He grew up to be a successful man in 
business, and became very well off. One day, not long ago, after his 
mother had been dead for twenty years, he thought he would remove 
her remains and put her into his own lot in the cemetery, and put up a 
little monument to her memory. As he came to remove them and to 
lay them away the thought came to him, that while his mother was alive 
she had prayed for him, and he wondered why her prayers were not an- 
swered. That very night that man was saved. After his mother had 
been buried so long a time, the act of removing her body to another 
resting place, brought up all recollections of his childhood, and he became 
a Christian. O, you mothers! — Moody. 

The Joy Of It (162). 

These words of comfort are from a little booklet by the sainted Dr. 
A. J. Gordon. Speaking to bereaved ones, he said: 

“O you that have laid away your loved ones, has one of you been 
able to open the door to bring them back? How you have wished that 
some fair morning you could go out and turn the key and usher them 
back, and introduce them into the world again! But there is One that 
has the key: “Fear not; ... I am He that liveth, and was dead; and, 
behold, I am alive forevermore, and have the keys of death and of the 
grave.” Thou art the King of kings, O Christ, but Thou art also the 
King and Conqueror of death, and in a little while we shall hear 
Thy voice sounding down from heaven, “Awake and sing, ye that dwell 
in the dust.” And we will sing as He calls us to Him. They that are 
alive and they that are in their graves instantly brought into one com- 
pany, and then the consummating act, expressed in those words that we 
have not begun to fathom : “Caught up together with them in the clouds, 
to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we be ever with the Lord. 
Wherefore comfort one another with these words.” 


DEATH OP THE MATURE. PARENTS, HUSBAND AND WIPE. 69 

Mother and Son (163). 

Some of you, perhaps, have read that little story of “Laddie.” A 
country boy wishing to make his fortune, comes to the great city of 
London. By and by he becomes a physician and gathers wealth and 
fame. His associations become most aristocratic and his handsome 
stone house becomes filled with the most artistic and beautiful things. 
For many years he made frequent visits to the old country home and his 
old country mother, but by and by the visits became more infrequent, 
and although he sent at regular intervals large sums of money to the 
old country mother, he at last never went to see her, and the mother’s 
heart was breaking at her son’s neglect. So one day she came to Lon- 
don and stood on the door-step of the great stone house. The servant 
admitting her, left her standing in the hall and told the doctor that a 
queer old woman from the country wished to see him. And he went into 
the hall to find his mother, and she said, “Laddie, I have come to stay 
with you, you are my boy, you know; I cannot bear the separation. I’ll 
never leave you any more.” The doctor took his mother into his private 
room and there they talked. He thought of his aristocratic friends, of 
the society in which he went, of the young girl whom he was so soon to 
marry, and then of his mother’s strange country dress and stranger 
country manners, and he was ashamed of his old mother. And he said, 
“Mother, I don’t think you had better stay here, you w r ill be happier with 
your old friends. I will rebuild the country home for you; you shall have 
everything money will give you, but I don’t think you will be happy 
here in this great city.” And the poison of her son’s infidelity entered 
her soul. The doctor went out and told the servants to prepare a room 
for an old nurse, and soon they retired for the night. After Laddie was 
in bed the door opened softly and in came the old mother. She came 
to the bedside and arranged the clothes and said, “Laddie I want to tuck 
you up again just as I used to do,” and printing a kiss on his brow, 
turned and went away. Then there came a rush of noble, generous im- 
pulse to that doctor’s heart. He said to himself, “Nay, she is my 
mother, I will not be ashamed of her. She shall live with me at my own 
house,” and in the triumph of that noble resolution, he fell asleep. On 
the morning he dressed and went joyfully to his mother’s room, but the 
bed had not been touched. He called his carriage, flew to the railway 
station, took the fastest train to the country town. She had not been 
there. He returned to the city, summoned detectives and put the police 
of the great city at work to find her. Month after month he continued 
the search until six months had passed, and then again with unremitting 
effort till a year had passed. Men as they passed him, said to one an- 
other, “What a change has come over that man.” His form began to be 
bent, and his hair was sprinkled with gray, and his step had lost its 
spring. After eighteen long months had passed, one day in going 
through a hospital, an attendant asked him to come and see an old 
woman who had been run over by an omnibus, and was all the time 
talking about “tucking up Laddie in bed.” He hastened to the little cot 
to find the almost lifeless and insensible form of his dying mother, all 
too late to find forgiveness. — Sel. 


70 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


A Faithful Wife (164). 

“What a shame for a big, strong man to be such a slave to an invalid 
wife!” were the words spoken a little too loudly by a girl in the saloon 
of an ocean steamer as a couple went down the stairway. An hour later 
the man in question took a seat beside the critic, who had formed and 
uttered her hasty judgment. “I think your remark, which I accidentally 
overheard, justifies me in telling you a little about my ‘slavery’ as you 
call it,” he said. “It began thirty years ago, when my young bride nursed 
me through yellow-fever — alone — because everyone else had fled in panic. 
She did not have a sound hour’s sleep for three weeks. Most of the time 
I was violently delirious, and how she managed to control me was a 
wonder. She brought me safely out of the disease before she fell ill 
with it herself. After she recovered she pulled me through a worse trial. 
I was in business with a man who proved a scoundrel, and for three years 
everybody except my wife believed that his villainy was mine. When I 
lost money and position, she did the work of three women. When sick- 
ness and death visited our home she met them with courage. For 
twenty-five years she did not spare herself. Five years ago her health 
gave way. She will never be well again. My ‘slavery’ is the slavery of 
a whole-hearted devotion to one of the noblest women ever given to 
earth. May you some day command as happy a ‘slave’!” — Adapted from 
the Youth’s Companion. 

A Wife’s Epitaph. (165) — In a Philadelphia cemetery is a husband’s 
epitaph — tribute to his wife, which reads: “I thank my God upon every 
remembrance of thee.” 


Mother Love (166). 

This command was preceded by the invitation, “Come thou and all 
thy house into the ark.” “An aged mother lay on her death-bed. She 
was nearly one hundred years old, and the husband, who had taken the 
journey with her, sat by her side. She was just breathing faintly, but 
suddenly she opened her eyes and said, ‘Why, it’s dark.’ ‘Yes, Janet, 
it is dark.’ ‘Is it night?’ ‘Oh, yes, it is midnight.’ ‘Are all the children 
in?’ ” There was that aged mother living life over again. Her youngest 
child had been in the grave twenty years, but she was traveling back to 
the old days, and she fell asleep in Christ, asking, “Are all the children 
in?” Parents, are all the children in the ark of safety? God says, “Come 
thou, and all thy house.” — Moody. 

The Halo of Home (167). 

Our higher and purer pleasures begin with [he home, and these do 
not fade with the changing years, but sweeten and ripen to the end. 
Love is the first sweet gift of life, the first joy the infant feels when 
it nestles near the mother’s heart, and the last joy to fade as, with the 
hand of a loved one in ours, we pass into the great unseen; nay, then it 
does not fade, but is only made immortal. How enriching and ennobling 
is the influence of spirit on spirit among — 


DEA TH OF THE MATURE. PARENTS, HUSBAND AND WIFE. 71 


“Those we love — 

The dear religions of our heart.” 

A true marriage is not merely a matter of the flesh; it is a union cf 
souls, a blending of kindred natures made one forever. It is on this 
union that the sanctities of home are built. There we are met in our 
return from daily toil with — 


“Those sunshine looks 
Whose beams would dim a thousand days.” 

There our sorrows are divided and our joys are doubled. There our path- 
way has been strewn, as with spring flowers, by a thousand — 

“Little, nameless, unremembered acts, 

Of kindness and of love.” 

There we have heard our children’s feet upon the stairs, and have 
seen with a delight, not unmixed with awe, the angel of their birth and 
path bending over their sleeping forms in holy supplication. There we 
have become the “liegemen of love” until the tresses of gold faded into 
the silver, which was as the dawn of another life. There, together, we have 
seen our children grow up into manhood and womanhood, and, together, 
blessed them as they went out into the battle of life. There, by tender- 
ness, and gentleness, and loving counsel, and wise restraint, we have 
laid up treasures of affection and devotion which enrich us now the twi- 
light shadows fall. There, with the world of strife shut out, and the 
world of love shut in, we have learned that life has no purer, deeper 
happiness than that which dwells in the inglenook at home. 

If wisdom and love have made our home something worthy of that 
name — which is among the sweetest of our language— at its door all the 
burdens drop off, as they will one day do at the gate of heaven. And 
this happiness does not decay as we grow old, but is more sweetly real- 
ized in age, when the bark does not so often dare the sea but clings 
to the haven — the haven of the household hearth. Truly, to the quiet and 
loving spirit, next to the haven of heaven, is the haven of home. Safe- 
sheltered here, we know they greatly err who say of the days of age that 
we find no pleasure in them. And though we must needs confront that 
tragedy, which our mutual love has deepened, that one must go first, 
that same love teaches us that it is only for a little while. — From Life’s 
Eventide. 


The Love of Home (168). 

It is almost the universal custom in America, and seems to be grow- 
ing in favor here, for great men to be buried in the place where they 
have mostly lived, and among their own kith and kin. Washington lies 
at Mount Vernon; Lincoln at Springfield; Emerson and Hawthorne under 
the pines of New England; Irving on the banks of the Hudson; Clay in 
Kentucky. They are laid to rest not in some central city or great struc- 


72 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


ture, but where they have lived, and where their families and neighbor* 
may accompany them in their long sleep. 

Sympathy (169). 

What is sympathy? It may be but a silent pressure of the hand. 
You will remember in the Greek myth how when brave Theseus entered 
the labyrinth with the purpose of slaying the Minotaur — the Cretan 
king’s pet-monster, whose annual luncheon of fourteen Athenian youths 
and maidens was considered by Minos as a “matter of state policy” — 
Ariadne, the beautiful princess, put into the youth’s left hand one end 
of a silken thread, she holding the other end. As he went on through the 
mizmaze, dizzy and perplexed, the moon hiding her face, the Minotaur’s 
roar growing nearer and louder, every now and then, he would feel the 
sympathetic touch of the princess pulling the silken cord. Theseus was a 
very Hercules in strength and intrepidity; besides he had his father’s 
magic gold-hilted sword. And yet he needed just that human sympathy 
to help him to victory, that silken cord to lead him back again after the 
victory. 

“A young wife stood beside a bier, 

Pale as a Wy in her weeds, 

And prayed for death with every tear 
As nuns drop Aves with their beads; 

A tiny hand stole into hers, 

A childish whisper checked her tears, 

I said, ‘She is not all alone, 

The infant’s grief will heal her own.’ ” 

Most of all do we need the divine sympathy, substitutional, because 
the Christ was tempted in all points as we are. “And having had com- 
passion on them,” is repeated so many times in the New Testament that 
we do not hesitate to say that compassion is the leading attribute of 
Christ, and sympathy the very essence of Christianity. — Ide. 

Filial Tenderness (170). 

I recall a young man in his home — a very great and famous man 
whose name I must not mention. His was the case of a man of genius, 
born of parents who had no pretensions to genius at all, and who was 
incomparably in advance of his parents in culture and education. Many 
a young man so circumstanced has been tempted to give himself airs; 
to look down upon his parents as inferiors, to shudder when they drop 
their h’s; to condole with himself as the offspring of bourgeois or plebian 
people, of whom he is obliged to be ashamed. Not so the young man of 
whom I speak. He had taken as his rule of life the highest of all ideals 
— the ideal of Him “who went down to His parents at Nazareth, and was 
subject unto them.” I have sat at his table, and heard him pour forth 
the stores of his unexampled eloquence, and unroll the treasures of his 
large heart in lessons full of depth and beauty; — and then his dear old 
mother — a perfect type of English middle-class womanhood, with some- 
thing of the holy Philistinism of a narrow creed which invests its humb- 
lest votaries with self-imagined infallibility — would lift up her monitory 


DEATH OF THE MATURE. PARENTS, HUSBAND AND WIFE. 73 


finger, before the assembled guests and say, “Now William” — we will 
call him “William,” though that was not his name — “listen to me.” Then 
while he and we respectfully listened, she would lay down the law with 
exquisite placidity, telling him how completely mistaken he was in these 
new-fangled notions — 

“Proving all wrong that hitherto was writ. 

And putting us to ignorance again.” 

“Yes, mother,” he would say, when her little admonition ended; and 
then conversation would resume its flow quite undisturbed, and the dear 
old lady was more than satisfied. It was the greatness of her son’s 
genius which made him so good a son. A smaller mind would have 
winced, or been contemptuous. “Men do not make their homes unhappy 
because they have genius,” says Wordsworth, “but because they have 
not enough genius; a mind and sentiment of a higher order would ren- 
der them capable of seeing and feeling all the beauty of domestic ties.” — 
Dean Farrar. 


A Mother's Sympathy (171). 

The comfortings of mother-love are intelligent and comprehending. 
Let a mother alone for finding out what is the matter with a child. She 
is better than a doctor, for she knows what to do for a wounded spirit, 
a troubled heart. Her insight does not depend on words. She knows 
what he wants before he asks for it. Even if he cannot tell, she will read 
it in his look or his voice. And if he tries to tell, she will not misun- 
derstand him. He goes to her, feeling sure she will understand. She 
comprehends him, and often knows what he wants better than he does. 
So God knows and comprehends us. Often in our vague longings, inar- 
ticulate distresses, and confused self-ignorance our appeal is like. — The 
Ripening Experience of Life. 

The Change Death Works (172). 

It is strange what a change is wrought in one hour of death. The 
moment our friend is gone from us forever, what sacredness invests him! 
Everything he ever said or did seems to return to us clothed in new sig- 
nificance. A thousand yearnings rise of things we would fain say to him 
— of questions unanswered and now unanswerable. All he wore or 
touched or looked have familiarly become sacred as relics. Yesterday 
these were homely articles, to be tossed to and fro, handled lightly, given 
away thoughtlessly: today we touch them softly, our tears drop on them; 
Death has laid his hand on them, and they have become holy in our eyes. 

Those are sad hours when one has passed from our doors never to 

return, and we go back to set the place in order. There the room so 

familiar, the homely belongings of their daily life; each one seems to 

say to us, in its turn, “Neither shall their place know them any more.” 

Ah! Why does this bring a secret pang with it, when we know that 
they are where none shall any more say, “I am sick!” Could only one 
flutter of their immortal garments be visible in such moments, could 


74 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


?- • 

.their face, glorious with the light of heaven once smile on the deserted 
room, it might he better. One needs to lose friends to understand one’s 
self truly. The death of a friend teaches things within that we never 
knew before. We may have expected it, prepared for it; it may have 
been hourly expected for weeks, yet when it comes, it falls on us sud- 
dnly and reveals in us emotions we could not dream. The opening of 
those heavenly gates for them startles and flutters our souls with strange 
mysterious thrills unfelt before. The glimpse of glories, the sweep of 
voices all startle and dazzle us, and the soul for many a day aches and 
longs with untold longings. — Harriet Beecher Stowe. 

A Mother's Memory (173). 

An old man sat on his veranda, one autumn evening, with the son of 
a former schoolmate. The visitor was a flippant young fellow, and talked 
much of his doubts about religion. The old man did not argue with him. 

“It isn’t worth while, Robert,” he said; “you are only repeating what 
other men have suggested to you. You have not begun to think or feel 
for yourself.” 

Robert was insistent, and finally asserted that the doctrine of a 
future life was all a dream. “Death is death,” he said. “When the 
breath goes out of the body, the soul comes to an end.” 

His aged host led him into his library, and showed him a portrait 
on the wall — a noble, saintly face. “Do you see her?” he said. “Can 
you guess what she was from her face — how high her intellect, how ten-, 
der her nature, how near to God? I was her son. She was — and as I 
have never married, she always will be — the only woman in the world 
to me. Well, she is dead. And you say there is nothing of her left in 
the world — nothing? Why, look here, Bob, do you see that bush in the 
yard? A common weed with coarse leaves and colorless flowers, of no 
special use or beauty. But that weed grows in every country. It grew 
centuries ago; it grew before the flood. It is the same now it was then. 
It has come down through countless ages, seed after seed, the same 
growth, the same flower, the same thorns, unaltered. And if God,” he 
said, rising in his earnestness, “if God has kept that little weed unaltered 
since the beginning of time, shall He extinguish the soul of my mother 
— the souls of all mothers — full of His truth and love, made of His like- 
ness, who have done His work in the world? Shall the poor matter in 
its meanest type last, and the soul, which represents His intelligence, 
and His spirit, come to an end?” — Youth’s Companion. 

Love Of Home (174). 

Abraham Lincoln, when a young man, joined a mounted Tolunteer 
regiment to resist the invasion of some Indian tribes. The danger over, 
he received his discharge; but his horse having been stolen he had to 
trudge the long weary distance to his home. His companion says: “As 
we drew nearer home the impulse became stronger, and urged us on 
amazingly. The long strides of Lincoln, often slipping back six inches 
in the loose sand, were just right for me, and he was greatly amused 
when he noticed me behind him, stepping along in his tracks to keep 
from slipping.” 


DEATH OF THE MATURE. PARENTS, HUSBAND AND WIFE. 75 
The Cure For Heartaches (175). 

How many aching, breaking hearts there are in this world of ours, 
so full of death and separation from those we most dearly love? How 
many a woman there is who a few years ago, or a few months or a few 
weeks ago, had no care, no worry, for by her side was a Christian hus- 
band who was so wise and strong that the wife rested all responsibility 
upon him and she walked care-free through life and satisfied with his 
love and companionship? But one awful daw he was taken from her. 
She was left alone, and all the cares and responsibilities rested upon 
her. How empty that heart has been ever since; how empty the whole 
world has been. She has just dragged through her life and her duties 
as best she could with an aching and almost breaking heart. But there 
is One, if she only knew it, wiser and more loving than the tenderest 
husband, One willing to bear all the care and responsibilities of life for 
her, One who is able, if she will only let Him, to fill every nook and corner 
of her empty and aching heart. — Rev. R. A. Torrey. 

Widows’ Sons (176). 

Schuyler Colfax, Vice-President during the first term of Genera 1 
Grant as President, was also a posthumous child. His mother married 
again when the boy was eleven years old. Henry Clay, like Andrew 
Johnson, was made fatherless at four. John Hancock of Revolutionary 
fame was only seven when his father died, and John Randolph “of 
Roanoke” was only two. Benjamin Rush, and John, Hugh and Edward 
Rutledge, notable men in the Revolutionary days, were all early left 
fatherless. Rush and Edward Rutledge were both signers of the Decla- 
ration of American Independence. 

Other notable American statesmen and political or military leaders 
who were widows’ sons were John C. Fremont, “the Pathfinder,” be- 
reaved of his father at five; Thomas H. Benton, father-in-law of Fremont, 
and a mighty statesman himself, left fatherless at eight; Edwin M. Stan- 
ton, the great War Secretary under Lincoln, and Salmon P. Chase, a rival 
with Lincoln for the Presidential nomination; Robert E. Lee, the great 
Southern Commander-in-Chief; George P. Meade, who commanded against 
him in the decisive battle of Gettysburg; and David Farragut, the naval 
hero of the Civil War. To these should be added Rufus Choate, the great 
senator, “in many respects the most scholarly of all American public 
men,” John Fiske, the historian, Nathaniel Hawthorne, James T. Fields 
and Bret Harte. — Whitaker. 

Sacred Are Sorrow’s Tears (177) 

There are few more bitter moments in life than those in which our 
tears fail as we look for the last time on the white face of our beloved 
dead; and God does not grudge us these tears. They are nature’s relief, 
but they may be heaven’s preparations too, sanctifying as well as sooth- 
ing to the heart; “sacred are sorrow’s tears, for Jesus wept.” 

In the touching story of the weeping sisters at Bethany we see 
death striking a home that seemed the unlikeliest on earth to be in- 
vaded by such a foe just then; for it had so long been the chosen retreat 
of Jesus, and its three inmates had been so long His dearest friends, that 


76 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


the keeping of it at least free from the desolation of death might have 
seemed essential to the comfort of the Lord Himself, to say nothing of 
the comfort of these close friends of His. Yet sorrow of the deepest kind 
came suddenly down, and over their loved brother’s dead body the sis- 
ters were shedding bitter tears. Did Christ rebuke them? Nay, he added 
His own holy tears to theirs. The tenderest touch in the picture is that 
which shows how “Jesus wept.” It was probably the first time they 
had seen their Lord in tears; at least it was the first time that He and 
they had wept together, and over the same thing, and He seemed in 
that dark hour to be more one with them than ever. 

How intensely human these tears of His! He knew that Lazarus 
was not lost to them, and yet He wept. He knew that, in a few moments 
more, intensest joy would fill these mourning hearts, and yet He wept. 
He knew that almost immediately they would have garments of praise 
instead of the spirit of heaviness, and yet He wept. It was intensely 
human, intensely sympathetic, intensely beautiful, and intensely com- 
forting as well; and it is a very suggestive fact that the Gospel by John 
— the gospel which more fully than any other shows us the real God- 
head of Jesus — is the Gospel in which His perfect humanity also comes 
most clearly into view. It shows us that He who was Divine enough to 
raise the dead was human enough to weep with those that were mourn- 
ing the dead; Divine enough to dry the mourner’s tears, yet human 
enough to shed tears Himself. — Rev. G. H. Knight. 

Home Religion (178). 

The Gospel should be all powerful in the home. Horace Bushnell 
thought that the need cf the world was “the out-populating power of a 
godly stock.” When Christ becomes master of the home, it becomes pos- 
sible to bless the world with a godly stock. Blessed are those homes 
where every member loves and obeys Christ. The following is a good 
motto to hang in the home: “Christ is the Head of this house; the Un- 
seen Guest at every meal; the Silent Listener to every conversation.” 
There is no other place where Christlike qualities shine so brightly. 
Obedience, love, reverence, patience, forbearance — such as these are 
household virtues. Let us invite Christ to come into our homes that He 
may teach us these things. — Daily Bible. 

A Mother's Love (179). 

I know a mother who lives down in the southern part of Indiana. 
Some years ago her boy came up to Chicago. He hadn’t been in the 
city long before he was led astray. A neighbor happened to come up 
to Chicago, and found him one night in the streets drunk. When that 
neighbor went home, at first he thought he wouldn’t say anything about 
it to the boy’s father, but afterwards he thought it his duty to tell him. 
So in a c*owd in the street of their little town he just took the father 
aside, and told him what he had seen in Chicago. It was a terrible blow. 
When the children had been put to bed that night he said to his wife, 
“Wife, I have bad news. I have heard from Chicago today.” The 
mother dropped her work in an instant and said: “Tell me what it is.” 
“Well, our son has been seen on the streets of Chicago drunk.” Neither 


DEATH OF THE MATURE. PARENTS, HUSBAND AND WIFE. 77 


of them slept that night, hut they took their burden to Christ, and about 
daylight the mother said: “I don’t know how, when or where, but God 
has given me faith to believe that our son will be saved and will never 
come to a drunkard’s grave. One week after, that boy left Chicago. 
He couldn’t tell why — an unseen power seemed to lead him to his 
mother’s home, and the first thing he said on coming over the threshold 
was, “Mother, I have come home to ask you to pray for me.’* And soon 
after he came back to Chicago a bright and shining light. — Moody. 

Comfort in a Mother’s Faith (180). 

The comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God is the 
perfect key to unlock all possible mysteries of human sorrow. It is a 
beautiful thing to have a theory that works out exactly in practice, and 
I know whereof I affirm. 

My own dear mother was carried through terrible affliction buoyed 
up by this infinite, unfailing comfort. It was like charity — or “love” — 
it never failed. The strength of her unquestioning, abiding sense of 
God’s love and of God’s wisdom was like a tower of strength to the 
weaker souls around her. It was not an ecstatic, emotional faith; there 
was no denying of the existence of pain, nor of its definite sensation, 
but a beautiful willingness to endure hardness as a good soldier. The 
brave life has long been ended so far as it was of the earth, but the 
spirit of it is woven into the lives of all who knew her, and the whole 
community is richer for her patience and courage. 

And if sorrow brings a soul nearer to the very heart of the God of 
all comfort and helps to bring other people too, it is a wonderful answer 
to our sad cries, “Why must this sorrow be?” The mystery of pain is 
solved. The great end of life is achieved if our souls are brought in 
unison with the Divine, if 

“His completeness flows around our incompleteness; 

Round our restlessness, His rest.” 

The way may be long, but the end is sure, and God is over all, 
blessed forever. And we can be partakers of the divine nature if we 
yield our wills to His. — The Congregationalist. 

Somebody’s Father (181). 

I think that one of the saddest incidents of the war which I wit- 
nessed was after the battle of Gettysburg. Off on the outskirts, seated 
on the ground, with his back to a tree, was a soldier, dead. His eyes 
were riveted on some object held tightly clasped in his hands. 
As we drew nearer we saw that it was an ambrotype of two 
small children. Man though I was, hardened through those long 
years to carnage and bloodshed, the sight of that man who 
looked on his children for the last time in this world, who, away off in 
a secluded spot had rested himself against a tree, that he might feast 
his eyes on his little loves, brought tears to my eyes which I could not 
restrain had I wanted. There were six of us in the crowd, and we all 
found great lumps gathering in our throats, and mist coming before our 


78 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


eyes which almost blinded us. We stood looking at him for some time. 
1 was thinking of the wife and baby I had left at home, and wondering 
how soon, in the mercy of God, she would he left a widow, and my baby 
boy fatherless. We looked at each other and instinctively seemed to 
understand our thoughts. Not a word spoken, but we dug a grave and 
laid the poor fellow to rest with his children’s picture clasped over his 
heart. Over his grave, on the tree against which he was sitting I in- 
scribed the words: “Somebody’s Father, July 3, 1863.” 

Tell Mother I’ll Be There (182). 

Just before he left by special train to visit his dying mother, Presi- 
dent McKinley wrote a telegram which probably has done more for the 
kingdom of God than any other single act of his life. The message 
read, “Tell mother I’ll be there.” 

Rev. Charles M. Fillmore, Indianapolis, Ind., read this message and 
saw the possibilities that lay in it. He caught the phrase and wrote his 
world-famous hymn, “Tell mother I’ll be there.” 

Charles M. Alexander took this song with him on an evangelistic 
tour around the world, and wherever he sang it the touching message 
reached the hearts of men. In the Welsh revival the only Alexander 
song carried by the Welsh singers was this song by Fillmore. 

Writing of the Welsh revival, Mr. W. T. Stead, editor of The Review 
of Reviews, quoted the chorus of this song and told of its wonderful ef- 
fects. Mr. Evan Roberts, the Welsh evangelist, remarked that the song 
touched more hearts and did more for Christ in the revival than any 
other song that was sung. 

Numberless instances of conversion have followed the trail of this 
mother song. Strong men have heard it and have been broken. Prodi- 
gals have heard it and have come home. The song has been criticized 
and torn to shreds, but it does its work, and it has never yet been re- 
placed by another that is better. 

Mr. Fillmore is an Endeavorer through and through. He went to 
Peru, Ind., in 1904 to establish a church, beginning with thirteen mem- 
bers. When he left this place six years later there were six hundred 
members. While in Peru he was elected vice-president of the State 
Christian Endeavor union. He has written a number of other mother 
songs, touching and tender, that are sung with good effect in evangelis- 
tic work; among them are “Home and Mother,” “My Good Old Mother’s 
Religion,” and “I’ll Wear a White Flower for You, Mother, Dear.” 

The words of the famous song that have carried Mr. Fillmore’s 
name and influence around the world are these: 

When I was but a little child, how well I recollect, 

How I would grieve my mother with my folly and neglect! 

And now that she has gone to heaven, I miss her tender care; 

O angels, tell my mother I’ll be there. 

Chorus: 

Tell mother I’ll be there, in answer to her prayer; 

This message, guardian angels, to her bear; 

Tell mother I’ll be there, heaven’s joys with her to share; 

Yes, tell my darling mother I’ll be there. 


DEATH OF THE MATURE. PARENTS, HUSBAND AND WIFE. 79 


Though I was often wayward, she was always kind and good; 

So patient, gentle, loving, when I acted rough and rude; 

My childhood’s griefs and trials she would gladly with me share! 

O angels, tell my mother I’ll be there. 

When I became a prodigal and left the old rooftree, 

She almost broke her loving heart in mourning after me, 

And day and night she prayed to God to keep me in His care; 

0 angels, tell my mother I’ll be there. 

One day a message came to me; it bade me quickly come, 

If I would see my mother ere the Saviour took her home; 

1 promised her before she died for heaven to prepare; 

0 angels, tell my mother I’ll be there. 

— Christian Endeavor World. 

Looking Down from Heaven (183). 

1 remember in the exposition building in Dublin, while I was speak- 
ing about Heaven, I said something to the effect that “perhaps at this 
moment a mother is looking down from Heaven upon her daughter here 
tonight,” and I pointed down to a young lady in the audience. Next 
morning I received this letter: 

“On Wednesday, when you were speaking of Heaven, you said, 'It 
may be this moment there is a mother looking down from heaven expect- 
ing the salvation of her child who is here.’ You were apparently look- 
ing at the very spot where my child was sitting. My heart said, ‘that is 
my child. That is her mother.’ Tears sprang to my eyes. I bowed my 
head and prayed, ‘Lord, direct that word to my darling child’s heart; 
Lord, save my child.’ I was then anxious till the close of the meeting, 
when I went to her. She was bathed in tears. She rose, put her arms 
round me, and kissed me. When walking down to you she told me it 
was that same remark (about the mother looking down from heaven) 
that found the way home to her, and asked me, ‘Papa, what can I do for 
Jesus?’ ” — Moody. 


Home (184). 

“Home is the child’s birthright. The world should unfold to a child 
from the home-center; all experience and education should there begin, 
that center meaning love, protection, trust, honor, discipline. 

“Home is the woman’s kingdom. Her power radiates from the 
hearth, which is the natural focus of her highest strength, gifts, and 
ambitions. The farther from the hearth she goes, the weaker is her 
grasp of happiness, whether as giver or receiver. 

“Home is the man’s anchorage, his point of security, the harbor to 
which he returns after toil and weariness, after wandering; home, 
whether the man be in it or out of it, is his remedy against the roughness 
and incertitude of life; it shields him, repairs him, softens him, steadies 
him, holds him to his best. 


80 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


“Home, in its highest aspects, is all this; and even when it falls 
short of the highest it retains a portion of its inevitable virtue and 
power. Beside the hearth we grow up, beside the hearth we must die. 

“The backbone of a people is made of its homes, and the nation 
that would be a strong nation is bound to foster the home-instinct 
within itself.” — The Englishwoman. 

Self-Sacrificing Lives (185). 

Above all, our sympathy and regard are due to the struggling wives 
among those whom Abraham Lincoln called the plain people, and whom 
he so loved and trusted; for the lives of these women are often led on 
the lonely heights of quiet, self-sacrificing heroism. — Theodore Roosevelt. 

“Oh, Me” or “Oh, You”? (186). 

Grandmother had suffered many weary months. Weighted with 
seventy-nine years, she was tired and wanted to be released. One 
afternoon I called, stepping in softly, and was told that she had just 
“gone home.” I was glad, and I said so next day when reading and 
speaking the words of comfort. 

The selfishness of sorrow. Crepe on the door, on the hats of the 
men, black dresses on the women, a slow-winding funeral train out to 
the grave, weeping, moaning, “Oh, me. She is gone; how can I live 
without her?” 

Nearly all of the sorrow seems to be for self. My loss, my loneli- 
ness, my unhappiness. God has taken one of His children to Himself, 
has freed his body from all pain, his mind from all anxiety, has wiped 
all tears from his face, has taken him to a home of bliss, has crowned 
one of His saints. Is not our sorrow a protest against God’s action? 

Would we, if we could, restrain God from thus blessing His child? 
To go was gain for our dear one; would we withhold it from him for 
our gain? “Oh, me, I am so miserable,” might well be changed to “Oh, 
you are so blessed.” 

There is a noble, an unselfish sorrow. Jesus was “a man of sor- 
rows.” But His sorrow was for others, not for Himself. And many of His 
disciples are acquainted with the same kind of sorrow, sorrow for others. 

Just recently there came to my notice a touching tragedy, a man 
dying of sorrow. But the sorrow was intensely selfish, all for himself. 
When you cry, “Oh, me,” analyze your sorrow; see if it is selfish. Sel- 
fishness, even in the form of sorrow, is not to be commended in one of 
the disciples of the “man of sorrows.” — The Presbyterian Advance. 

Death an Answer to Christ’s Prayer (187). 

We often speak of our sorrows as being God’s strange answers to 
many of our prayers, prayers for greater holiness of heart and life, for 
more perfect detachment of spirit from the world, and for a deepening 
of faith. But do we ever think that in the death of our beloved who 
have gone home to heaven there has been only an answer to the greater 
prayer of Christ Himself? Why was it that that dear one was taken from 
your side, and from the love-grasp that would have held it longer if it 
could? Was it not because while you were praying, almost in agony. 


DEATH OF THE MATURE. PARENTS, HUSBAND AND WIFE. 81 


“Father, let this dear one whom Thou hast given me be still with me 
where I am,” Christ was praying, “Father, I will that this one whom 
Thou has given me be with me where I am;” and His prayer prevailed 
over yours, as it was right it should, for yours was ignorant but His was 
wise; yours was love, hut His was love deeper still? Can you grudge 
your Lord that answer to a prayer of His? 

Our eyes behold Thee not. 

Yet hast Thou not forgot 

Those who have placed their hope, their trust, in Thee; 

Before Thy Father’s face 
Thou hast prepared a place. 

That where Thou art there they may also he. 

— Selected. 


A Glorious Death (188). 

“Death is a glorious event to one going to Jesus,” said David Liv- 
ingstone. , *| "i 

Triumphant and glorious was the passing away from life of the 
famous evangelist, Dwight L. Moody. “He was not yearning to go; he 
loved his work”; said his son. “But suddenly he exclaimed, ‘Earth re- 
cedes; heaven opens before me.* The first impulse was to try to arouse 
him from what appeared to be a dream. ‘No, this is no dream, Will,’ he 
replied. ‘It is beautiful. It is like a trance. If this is death, it is sweet. 
There is no valley here. God is calling me, and I must go.’ ” 

In the South Kensington Museum there hangs a picture of “The 
Death of Cromwell.” The bed, the face of his daughter, the whole room 
are in shadows, but a bright light emanates from the Bible lying on his 
breast and flashes upward into his face a glory not of earth. The artist 
has pictured the secret of all glorious deaths. Thou wilt keep him in 
perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee. 

Men mourned about the Christian’s couch, and said: 

“Alas! He leaveth home; this night he will be dead”; 

While angels, smiling o’er the group forlorn, 

Whispered: “He cometh home, this night he will be born.” 

r — Tarbell. 


Relics of the Departed (189). 

We divide among ourselves the possessions of our lost ones. Each 
well-known thing comes to us with an almost supernatural power. The 
book we once read with them, the old Bible, the familiar hymn; then, 
perhaps, little pet articles of fancy, made dear to them by some peculiar 
taste — the picture, the vase — how costly are they now in our eyes! We 
value them not for their beauty or worth, but for the frequency with 
which we have seen them touched or used by them; and our eye runs 
over the collection, and perhaps lights most lovingly on the homeliest 
thing which may have been oftenest touched or worn by them. 

But there are invisible relics of our lost ones more precious than 
the book, the picture, or the vase. Let us treasure them in our hearts. 
Let us bind to our hearts the patience which they will never need again, 


82 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


the fortitude in suffering which belonged only to this suffering state. 
Let us take from their dying hand that submission under affliction which 
they shall need no more in a world where affliction is unknown. Let us 
collect in our thoughts all those cheerful and hopeful sayings which 
they threw out from time to time as they walked with us, and string 
them as a rosary to be daily counted over. Let us test our own daily 
life by what must be their now perfected estimate; and as they once 
walked with us on earth, let us walk with them in heaven. 

We may learn at the grave of our lost ones how to live with the liv- 
ing. It is a fearful thing to live so carelessly as we often do with those 
dearest to us, who may at any moment be gone forever. The life we 
are living, the words we are now saying will all be lived over in mem- 
ory over some future grave. If we would know how to measure our 
words to living friends, let us see how we feel toward the dead. Let us 
walk softly, let us forbear and love. None ever repented of too much 
love to a departed friend; none ever regretted too much tenderness and 
indulgence; but many a tear has been shed for too much hardness and 
severity. Let our friends in heaven, then, teach us how to treat our 
friends on earth; thus, by no vain, fruitless sorrow, but by a deeper self- 
knowledge, a tender and more sacred estimate of life, may our heavenly 
friends prove to us ministering spirits. — Harriet Beecher Stowe. 


DEATH OF THE MATURE. PARENTS, HUSBAND AND WIFE. 83 


ILLUSTRATIVE VERSES. 

Guided Safely Home (190). 

Out in the land of sky 
There is a dazzling City, built of gold, 

Whose walls of jasper lie 
Four-square beyond the stars. There we behold 
The risen Son of God. 

No crown of thorns upon His brow are pressed, 

Nor marks of sorrow’s rod 

Upon His onee-bruised back. He speaks of peace and rest 
To every struggling heart; 

He bids us trust, and hope, and work, and pray — 

To do in faith the part 
We have before us in life’s little day. 

And so in His great love 
We find our deepest joy, our life, our all; 

For He is there above 
To guide us home, lest on the way we fall. 

— Reichard. 


A Noble Ambition (191). 

Build thee more stately mansions, oh, my soul. 

As the swift seasons roll! 

Leave thy low-vaulted past 

Let each new temple, nobler than the last. 

Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast. 

Till thou at length art free, 

Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea. 

— Oliver Wendell Holmes. 

The Same Old Faces (192). 

God does not send us strange flowers, every year. 

When the soft winds blow o’er the pleasant places; 

The same old forms look out from the same old faces, 

The violet is here. 

It all comes back, the odor, grace and hue. 

Each fond relation of the life repeated; 

Nothing is lost, no looking for is cheated 
It is the thing we knew. 

So after death’s winter it shall be, 

God will not put strange sights in heavenly places; 

The same old love will look out from the same sweet faces, 
And we shall cry, ‘Beloved, I have thee!' 

— From the German. 


84 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


While We May (193). 

The hands are such dear hands — 

They are so full, they turn so oft. 

At our demands: 

So often they reach out 

With trifles scarcely thought about; 

So many times they do 
So many things for me, for you — 

If their fond wills mistake 
We may well bend, not break. 

They are such fond, frail lips 

That speak to us! Pray, if love strips 

Them of discretion, many times, 

Or if they speak too slow, or quick, such crimes 
We may pass by; for we may see 
Days not far off, when these small words may be 
Held not as slow or quick, 

Or out of place, but dear — 

Because the lips that spoke are no more here. 

They are such dear, familiar feet that go 
Along the path with ours — feet fast or slow. 

But trying to keep pace. 

If they mistake, 

Or tread upon some flower that we would take 
Upon our breast, 

Or bruise some reed, 

Or crush some hope until it bleed, 

We may be mute, 

Not turning quickly to impute 
Grave fault; for they and we 
Have such a little way to go — can be 
Together such a little while along the way — 

We will be patient while we may. 

So many little faults we find! 

We see them; for not blind 
Is love. We see them; but if you and I 
Perhaps remember them, some bye and bye 
They will not be 

Faults then, grave faults, to you and me; 

But just odd ways, mistakes, or even less, 
Remembrances to bless. 

Days change so many things — yes, hours! 

We see so differently in suns and showers! 

Mistaken words tonight 

May be so cherished by tomorrow’s light! 

We will be patient, for we know 
There’s such a little way to go. 


■Author unknown. 


DEATH OP THE MATURE. PARENTS, HUSBAND AND WIFE. 85 




Another ( 

Another hand is beckoning us, 
Another call is given; 

And glows once more with angels 
steps 

The path which reaches heaven. 

Our dear and gentle friend, whose 
smile 

Made brighter summer hours, 
Amid the heat of summer time, 
Has left us with the flowers. 

The light of her dear life went 
down, 

As sinks behind the hill 
The glory of a setting star, — 
Clear, suddenly, and still. 

As pure and sweet, her fair brow 
seemed 

Eternal as the sky; 

And, like the brook’s low song, her 
voice — 

A sound which could not die. 

And half we deemed she needed 
not 

The changing of her sphere, 

To give to heaven a shining one 
Who walked an angel here. 

The blessing of her quiet life 
Fell on us like the dew; 

And good thoughts where her foot- 
steps pressed, 

Like fairy blossoms grew. 

Sweet promptings unto kindest 
deeds 

Were in her very look; 

Be Swift in 

Be swift, dear heart, in loving, 

For time is brief, 

And thou may’st soon along life’s 
highway 

Keep step with grief. 


II (194). 

We read her face as one who 
reads 

A true and holy book. 

We miss her in her place of 
prayer. 

And by the hearth-fire’s light; 
We pause beside her door to hear 
Once more her sweet “Good 
Night!” 

There seems a shadow on the day, 
Her smile no longer cheers; 

A dimness on the stars of night, 
Like eyes that look through 
tears. 

Alone unto our Father’s will 
One thought hath reconciled; 
That He whose love exceedeth 
ours 

Hath taken home His child. 

Fold her, O Father! in Thine arms. 
And let her henceforth be 
A messenger of love between 
Our human hearts and Thee. 

Still let her mild rebuking stand 
Between us and the wrong, 

And her dear memory serve to 
make 

Our faith in goodness strong. 

And grant that she, who, tremb- 
ling here, 

Distrusted all her powers. 

May welcome to her holier home 
The well-beloved of ours. 

— Whittier. 

Loving (194). 

Be swift, dear heart, in saying 
The kindly word; 

When ears are sealed, thy pas- 
sionate pleading 
Will not be heard. 


86 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


Be swift, dear heart, in doing 
The gracious deed, 

Lest soon they whom thou holdest 
dearest 

Be past the need. 

Be swift, dear heart, in giving 
The rare sweet flower, 


Nor wait to heap with blossoms 
the casket 
In some sad hour. 

Dear heart, be swift in loving — 
Time speedeth on; 

And all thy chance of blessed ser- 
vice 

Will soon be gone. 

— British Weekly. 


Sleep on, Beloved (195). 

Sleep on, beloved, sleep, and take thy rest; 

Lay down thy head upon thy Saviour’s breast: 

We love thee well; but Jesus loves thee best — 
Good-night! Good-night! Good-night! 

Calm is thy slumber as an infant’s sleep; 

But thou shalt wake no more to toil and weep: 

Thine is a perfect rest, secure and deep — 

Good-night! 

Until the shadows from this earth are cast; 

Until He gathers in His sheaves at last; 

Until the twilight gloom is overpast — 

Good-night! 

Until the Easter glory lights the skies; 

Until the dead in Jesus shall arise. 

And He shall come, but not in lowly guise — 

Good-night! 

Until made beautiful by Love Divine, 

Thou, in the likeness of Thy Lord shalt shine, 

And He shall bring that golden crown of thine — 

Good-night! 

Only “good-night,” beloved — not “farewell!” 

A little while, and all His saints shall dwell 
In hallowed union, indivisible — 

Good-night! 

Until we meet again before His throne. 

Clothed in the spotless robe He gives His own, 

Until we know even as we are known — 

Good-night! 

— Sarah Doudney. 


DEATH OF THE MATURE. PARENTS, HUSBAND AND WIFE. 87 


Are Ye There, 

’Twas ilka nicht when John cam’ 
hame, 

An’ pat his horses by, 

He’d come up to the kitchen door 
An’ keek in on the sly; 

An’ as he dichted clean his feet 
He aye had this bit cry — 

“Are ye there, Janet?” 

An’ I wad just say “Ay.” 

He hadna mony words, ye ken; 

He thocht mair than he said; 
But aye I kent his heart was true 
As he earned oor daily bread. 

I aye was glad to hear his step, 
An’ syne his heartsome cry — 
“Are ye there, Janet?” 

An’ I wad just say “Ay.” 

He aye was prood, at kirk or fair. 
To hae me at his side; 

’Twas just the same, year in, year 
oot, 

As when I was his bride, 

He didna need to speak o’ love — 

I kent it in his cry — 

“Are ye there, Janet?” 

An’ I wad answer “Ay.” 


Janet? (196). 

The years cam roun’, the years 
gaed by 

Oor bairns were born and died: 
Oor bonny lambs! Ah! sweir were 
we 

To lay them side by side; 

But ever at the gloamin’ ’oor 
I’d hear the cheery cry — 

“Are ye there, Janet?” 

An’ I wad aye say “Ay.” 

It’s ten years noo I’ve lived my 
lane — 

An’ weary is the road — 

Since my gudeman was ta’en frae 
me 

Up to the bricht abode, 

Weel do I mind that last drear 
nicht! 

His last breath was the cry — 
“Are ye there, Janet?” 

An' I could just say “Ay.” 

It’ll no’ be lang before I’ll be 
Wi’ my gudeman ance mair; 

An’ gladly I’ll the summons hear 
To gang to him up there; 

He’s waitin’ for me near the gate; 

When I win in he’ll cry — 

“Are ye there, Janet?” 

I’ll smile an’ just say “Ay.” 

— A. B. Meldrum, D. D. 


Heavenly Recognition (197). 

We are quite sure 

That He will give them back — bright, pure and beautiful. 

We know He will but keep 

Our own and His until we fall asleep. 

We know He does not mean 
To break the strands reaching between 
The Here and There. 

He does not mean — though Heaven be fair — 

To change the spirits entering there, that they forget 
The eyes upraised and wet — 

The lips too still for prayer, 

The mute despair. 

He will not take 

The spirits which He gave, and make 


88 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


The glorified so new, 

That they are lost to me and you. 

God never made 

Spirit for spirit, answering shade for shade. 

And placed them side by side — 

So wrought in one, though separate, mystified — 

And meant to break 

The quivering threads between. 


He and She (198). 

“She is dead!” they said to him, “come away; 

Kiss her and leave her — thy love is clay!” 

They smoothed her tresses of dark brown hair; 

On her forehead of stone they laid it fair. 

Over her eyes that gazed too much 
They drew the lids with a gentle touch; 

With a tender touch they closed up well 
The sweet thin lips, that had secrets to tell. 

About her brows and her beautiful face 
They tied her veil and her marriage lace, 

And drew on her white feet her white silk shoes 
Which were the whitest, no eye could choose. 

And over her bosom crossed her hands; 

“Come away,” they said, “God understands.” 

And there was silence, and nothing there 
But silence, and scents of eglantere, 

And jasmine, and roses, and rosemary; 

And they said, “As a lady should lie, lies she.” 

And they held their breath ’till they left the room 
With a shudder, a glance at its stillness and gloom. 

But he, who loved her too well to dread 
The sweet, the stately, the beautiful dead. 

He lit his lamp and took the key 
And turned it — alone again — he and she. 

He and she — but she would not speak, 

Though he kissed, in the old place, the quiet cheek. 


DEATH OF THE MATURE. PARENTS, HUSBAND AND WIFE. 89 


He and she: yet she would not smile 
Though he called her the name she loved erstwhile. 

He and she; still she did not move 
To any passionate whisper of love. 

Then he said, “Cold lips, and hreast without breath 
Is there no voice, no language of death, 

“Dumb to the ear, and still to the sense 
But to heart and soul distinct, intense? 

“See now, I will listen with soul, not ear; 

What was the secret of dying, dear? 

“Was it the infinite wonder of all 
That you ever could let life’s flower fall? 

“Or was it a greater marvel to feel 
The perfect calm o’er the agony steal? 

“Was the miracle greater to find how deep 
Beyond all dreams sank downward that sleep? 

“Did life roll back its record, dear, 

And show, as they say it does, past things clear? 

“And was it the Innermost heart of the bliss 
To find out so, what a wisdom love is? 

“O, perfect dead! O, dead most dear! 

I hold the breath of my soul to hear. 

“I listen as deep as to terrible hell. 

As high as to heaven, and you do not tell. 

“There must be pleasure in dying, sweet. 

To make you so placid from head to feet! 

“I would tell you, darling, if I were dead 
And your hot tears on my brow were shed. 

“I would say, tho’ the angel of death had laid 
His sword on my lips to keep it unsaid — 

“You should not ask vainly with streaming eyes 
Which of all deaths was the chiefest surprise, 

“The very strangest and suddenest thing 
Of all the surprise that dying must bring.” 


90 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


Ah, foolish world! O, most kind dead. 

Though he told me, who will believe it was said. 


Who will believe that he heard her say. 

With the sweet, soft voice, in the dear old way, 

“The utmost wonder is this — I hear 

And see you, and love you, and kiss you, dear. 


I am your angel, who was your bride 
And know that, though dead, I have never died.” 

— Sir Edwin Arnold. 


Sin Mither’s 

“It mak’s change in a roon 
When mither’s gane, 

The cat has less contented croon, 
The kettle has a dowie tune, 
There’s naething has sae blythe 
a soun, 

Sin mither’s gane. 

The father’s there, but losh! puir 
man, 

Sin mither’s gane, 

Altho’ he does the best he can, 


Gane (199). 

He hasna sic a tender han’ — 

The bottom’s oot o’ nature’s plan, 
When mither’s gane. 

Oh lonely house! Oh empty 
chair! — 

The mither’s gane; 

Yet fancy often sees her there, 
Wi’ a’ the smiles she used to wear 
Which brings our hearts maist to 
despair, 

To think she’s gone.” 


Growing Old (200). 

Softly, oh, softly, the years have swept by thee, 
Touching thee lightly with tenderest care; 

Sorrows and death they have often brought nigh thee. 
Yet they have left thee but beauty to wear: 
Growing old gracefully, 

Gracefully fair. 

Far from the storms that are lashing the ocean, 
Nearer each day to the pleasant home light; 

Far from the waves that are big with commotion. 
Under full sail and the harbor in sight: 

Growing old gracefully, 

Cheerful and bright. 

Past all the winds that were adverse and chilling. 

Past all the islands that lured thee to rest, 

Past all the currents that lured thee unwilling 

Far from thy course, to the land of the blest: 
Growing old gracefully, 

Peaceful and blest. 


DEATH OF THE MATURE. PARENTS, HUSBAND AND WIFE. 91 


Never a feeling of envy or sorrow 

When the bright faces of children are seen; 

Never a year from the young wouldst thou borrow — 
Thou dost remember what lieth between: 
Growing old willingly, 

Thankful, serene. 

Rich in experience that angels might covet. 

Rich in a faith that hath grown with the yearB, 

Rich in a love that grew from and above it, 

Soothing thy sorrows and hushing thy fears. 
Growing old wealthily. 

Loving and dear. 

Hearts at the sound of thy coming are lightened. 
Ready and willing thy hand to relieve; 

Many a face at thy kind word has brightened; 

“It is more blessed to give than receive”: 
Growing old happily, 

Ceasing to grieve. 

Eyes that grow dim to earth and its glory 

Have a sweet recompense earth can not know; 

Ears that grow dull to the world and its story 
Drink in the songs that from Paradise flow: 
Growing old gracefully, 

Purer than snow. 


A Traveler (201) 


Into the dusk and snow 
One fared on yesterday; 

No man of us may know 
By what mysterious way. 

He had been comrade long; 

We fain would hold him still; 
But, though our will be strong, 
There is a stronger Will. 

Beyond the solemn night 

He will find morning-dream, 


The summer’s kindly light 
Beyond the snow’s chill gleam. 

The clear, unfaltering eye. 

The inalienable soul, 

The calm, high energy — 

They will not fail the goal! 

Large will be our content 
If it be ours to go 
One day the path he went 
Into the dusk and snow! 

— Clinton Scollard. 


The Christian’s “Good Night” (202). 

The early Christians were accustomed to bid their dying friend 
“Good-night,” so sure were they of their awakening on the Resurrection 
morning. 


92 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


Sleep on, beloved, sleep, and take thy rest; 

Lay down thy head upon thy Saviour’s breast; 

We love thee well, but Jesus loves thee best — 

Good-night! 

Calm is thy slumber as an infant’s sleep; 

But thou shalt wake no more to toil and weep; 

Thine is a perfect rest, secure and deep — 

Good-night! 

Until the shadows from this earth are cast, 

Until He gathers in His sheaves at last, 

Until the twilight gloom be over-past — 

Good-night! 

Until the Easter glory lights the skies, 

Until the dead in Jesus shall arise. 

And He shall come, but not in lowly guise — 

Good-night! 

Until, made beautiful by love divine, 

Thou in the likeness of thy Lord shall shine, 

And He shall bring that golden crown of thine — 
Good-night! 

Only “Good-night,” beloved, not “Farewell!” 

A little while and all his saints shall dwell. 

In hallowed union indivisible — 

Good-night! 

Until we meet again before His throne, 

Clothed in the spotless robe He gives His own. 

Until we know even as we are known — 

Good-night! 

This hymn was sung by Mr. Sankey at the funeral of the Rev. 

Chas. Spurgeon. 


Of One Departed (203). 

She lingered on the shores of time a few short years, like one 
Who seemed a stranger in a land whence all her kin had gone; 

A far-away and plaintive look was on her sad young face — 

A waif of adverse circumstance, she found no resting place. 

But at the close of one dark day she softly fell asleep, 

And we who stood around her couch could only look and weep; 

Then to her face the smile returned, which had been gone for years— 
A source of sacred joy to us, and yet a cause for tears. 


DEATH OF THE MATURE. PARENTS, HUSBAND AND WIFE. 93 

The smile returned, unseen, till then, since fell disease had cast 
A blight upon her buoyant youth in other days long past; 

And when the trump of God shall sound, and all the dead shall rise. 
That smile shall greet the Lord of Life descending from the skies. 

— Rev. J. R. Newell, Markdale, Ontario. 


The Gladness of the Going (204). 


O! the gladness of the going, 
When the faithful travel home; 
O! the rapture of the welcome, 
Where their feet no more shall 
roam; 

O! the beauty of the mansion, 
Which for them is all prepared, 
And the bliss their souls inherit, 
Who in Jesus’ love have 
shared : — 

O! the joy ’neath heaven’s dome 
When the faithful travel home! 

Through the tempest and the sun- 
shine 

They have crossed life's vales 
and hills; 

’Neath a changeful sky, their 
pathway 

Led them oft through many ills; 
Now, before them lieth nothing 
Save the cloudless perfect day, 
Shining o’er immortal beauty 
In an everlasting ray: — 

O! the joy ’neath heaven’s dome 
JVhen the faithful travel home! 


Unto this they’ve looked with 
longing, 

As their various paths they 
trod; 

All have come through one dirk 
valley 

As they’ve traveled home to God; 

Some through years of long en- 
durance, 

In a moment some have passed. 

But the hour of final testing 
Was of pain and woe their 
last: — 

O! the joy ’neath heaven’s dome 
When the faithful travel home! 

From their trial to their triumph — 
Is a sure and high exchange; 

All the secrets of the ages, 

Are the fields they swiftly 
range: 

In the love of friends beloved — 

In the fellowship of Christ — 

In the Father’s gracious favor — 
Thus they keep the Spirit's 
tryst: — 

Sweet the joy ’neath heaven’s 
dome 

When the faithful travel home! 

— Lillian C. Nevin. 


Recompense (205). 


We are quite sure 

That He will give them back — bright, pure and beautiful. 

We know He will but keep 

Our own and His until we fall asleep. 

We know He does not mean 

To break the strands reaching between 

The here and there. 

He does not mean — though Heaven be fair — 


94 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


To change the spirits entering there, that they forget 
The eyes upraised and wet, 

The lips too still for prayer, 

The mute despair. 

He will not take 

The spirits which He gave, and make 

The glorified so new 

That they are lost to me and you, 

I do believe 

They will receive 

Us — you and me — and be so glad 

To meet us, that when most I would grow sad 

I just begin to think about that gladness, and the day 

When they shall tell us all about the way 

That they have learned to go — 

Heaven’s pathways show. 

My lost, my own, and I 

Shall have so much to see together by and by. 

I do believe that just the same sweet face, 

But glorified, is waiting in the place 
Where we shall meet, if only I 
Am counted worth in that by and by, 

I do believe that God will give a sweet surprise 
To tear-stained, saddened eyes. 

And that His Heaven will be 

Most glad, most tided through with joy for you and me. 
As we have suffered most. God never made 
Spirit for Spirit, answering shade for shade, 

And placed them side by side — 

So wrought in one, though separate, mystified — 

And meant to break 

The quivering threads between. When we shall wake, 
I am quite sure we will be very glad 
That for a little while we were so sad. 

— George Klingle. 


O Happy Home (206). 

O happy home, where thou art loved the dearest. 
Thou loving Friend and Saviour of our race. 
And where among the guests there never cometh 
One who can hold such high and honored place. 

O happy home, where each one serves thee, lowly. 
Whatever his appointed task may be, 

Till every common task seems great and holy, 
When it is done, O Lord, as unto theet 


DEATH OF THE MATURE. PARENTS, HUSBAND AND WIFE. 95 


O happy home, where two in heart united 
In holy faith and blessed hope are one, 

Whom death a little while alone divideth. 

And cannot end the union here begun. 

O happy home, where thou are not forgotten 
When joy is overflowing, full, and free; 

O happy home, where every wounded spirit 
Is brought. Physician, Comforter, to thee, — 

Until at last, when earth’s day’s work is ended. 

All meet thee in the blessed home above. 

From whence thou earnest, where thou hast ascended. 
Thy everlasting home of peace and love. 

— Selected. 


Sorrow Cheered By Hope (207). 

There is many a heart that understands only too keenly the mean* 
Ing of this moan: 

“Oh, dearest one, we saw thy white soul shining 
Behind the face. 

Bright with the beauty and celestial glory 
Of an immortal grace. 

What wonder that we stumble, faint and weeping, 

And sick with fears. 

Since thou has left us — all alone with sorrow 
And blind with tears?” 

But it is also true — gloriously true — that many a one can enter just 
as fully into this song of a confident trust: 

“The promise of the morrow 
Is glorious on that eve. 

Dear as the holy sorrow 
When good men cease to live. 

When brightening ere it die away 
Mounts up their altar flame. 

Still tending with intenser ray 
To Heaven whence first it came. 

Say not it dies, that glory, 

’Tis caught unquenched on high, 

Those saint-like brows so hoary 
Shall wear it in the sky.” 


96 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


The Touch of a Vanished Hand (208). 

We sigh for the touch of the vanished hand — 

The hand of a friend most dear. 

Who has passed from our side to the shadowy land. 
But what of the hand that is near? 

To the living’s touch is the soul inert 
That weep’s o’er the silent urn? 

For the love that lives is our hand alert 
To make some sweet return? 

Do we answer back in a fretful tone, 

When life’s duties press us sore? 

Is our praise as full as if they were gone. 

And could hear our praise no more? 

As the days go by are our hands more swift 
For a trifle beyond their share, 

Than to grasp for a kindly, helpful life — 

The burden some one must bear? 

We sigh for the touch of a vanished hand. 

And we think ourselves sincere; 

But what of the friends that about us stand. 

And the touch of the hand that is near? 

— British Weekly. 


In the Presence of the King (209). 

Under the cross of a mourner’s pain 
Laid on the soul when you went to God, 

We have walked a year, while the sun and rain 
Faded and freshened the grassy sod. 

Have you ever missed us, walking alone 
By the beautiful shore of the jasper sea? 

Have you kept the old place in your heart for your own. 
Wherever you linger — wherever we be? 

In the harmonies that the holy sing 
Have you heard the voices we’ve missed so long? 

Have you seen the light which their glad eyes bring 
Shining out from the heavenly throng! 

Have you sat in the hush of some holy place 
When the heaven was flooded with God’s own calms. 

And kissed, for its mother, the angel face 
Of some little child that crept to your arms? 

Are there any to comfort, — to cheer, — to bless? 

Is this the work to the freed soul given? 

Does earth’s most beautiful tenderness 
Find place in the blessed life of heaven? 


DEATH OF THE MATURE. PARENTS/ HUSBAND AND WIFE. 97 

Ah, vainly we question, — our pleading is vain 
For words that the stilled lips cannot say, 

Yet we feel your touch on our heart’s sore pain. 

Your eyes smile a welcome, — and yet we stay. 

And clasping our crosses we’ll try to wait, 

No matter how many the summers be. 

For whether our coming be soon or late 

We know they are years with the King for thee, 

They can add no shadow of pain or care 
To dim the sweetness the dear face wore, 

No lines of white to the silvery hair, — 

For all that is beautiful entering there 
Is beautiful evermore. 

— Mary Lowe Dickinson. 


The Christian's Home Going (211). 


“A snow rim on my brow. 

But summer in my heart, 

My feet are weary now — 

Soon earth and I must part. 
But God has made my pathway 
bright; 

And now at evening time 
there’s light. 

“A staff of easy grasp. 

Supports my yielding limb; 

He bids my faith to clasp 
Its hold and trust on Him. 

His will and care are my delight; 
And lo, at evening time there’s 
light. 

“Like winter suns that shine 
E’en through the cloudy rifts, 
His love and favor now are mine. 


Rich in my Father’s gifts. 

I may not fear, there is no night; 
Behold at evening time there’s 
light. 

“My outward vision’s dim. 

My inward eye is clear; 

My every thought of Him 
Disperses every fear. 

I know life’s outcome will be 
right 

For now at evening time there’s 
light. 

“Some night, or morn, or noon. 
Life’s journey will be done. 

Nor do I fear if soon 
My endless life’s begun. 

Then, oh the bliss of that first 
sight 

When path and pillow flame with 
light!” 


98 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


TEXT AND TREATMENT HINTS. 

“She Goeth Unto the Grave to Weep There.” — John 11:31 (212). 

Comfort is not the only thing we need, if the graves of our beloved 
are to be made places of true blessing to our souls. Standing there, 
many solemn thoughts may well stir within us, many serious self-ques- 
tionings, many deep heart-searchings may come. I. The life of the dead 
is sure to be reviewed, many half-forgotten incidents in it are sure to be 
recalled, and our own life in relation to the dead will be reviewed as 
well. II. Happy they who at such a time, will not have to weep over 
remembered harshnesses and bitternesses, over biting words that made 
a loving heart ache for days, over selfishness and sins that hastened 
the death so mourned at last, and made it a heavier sorrow than it 
would otherwise have been, because reparation is now an impossible 
thing! 

III. Even where there is nothing of this, and the remembrances 
are only sweet, to stand at the grave is still a solemn thing. It brings 
us closer to eternal realities than almost anything else can do. — Selected. 

“He Was Not For God Took Him”— Gen. 5:24 (213). 

The death of an aged saint borders on a translation. So far as the 
Departed is concerned, there is nothing to mourn. He has, 1. Passed 
the ordinary limit of life; 2. Begun to feel the infirmities of age; 3. 
Life’s mission is fulfilled; 4. Character ripened and matured; 5. Imme- 
diate translation to glory, with scarce any experience of dying. Mourn- 
ing is occasioned in such instances simply by the wounded hearts of 
survivors. Ties cannot be sundered without pain. Must not confound 
the grief of nature with the hopeless and rebellious sorrow of despair, 
etc. — Sel. 

“Thou Shalt Come to Thy Grave In a Full Age Like as a Shock of Corn 
Cometh in in Its Season.” — Job 5:26 (214). 

X 0 Religion preserves the body as well as saves the soul. Other things 

being equal piety prolongs life. 

II. For the faithful Christian death crowns life. It is life’s perfect 

rounding out and earthly completion. 

“As One Whom His Mother Comforteth, So Will I Comfort You.” — Isai. 

66:13 (215). 

A mother’s business is to interpret God to her children by giving 
them such experience of maternal comfortings as shall help them to 
comprehend how deep and rich and dear a thing God means in that ten- 
derest promise given to his earthly children, “As one whom his mother 
comforteth, so will I comfort you.” Mrs. Browning’s unpitying paternal 
parent did not help her to comprehend the meaning of the psalmist’s 
words, “Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them 
that fear Him,” but that she was well mothered is indicated when she 
writes of God thus: 


DEATH OF THE MATURE. PARENTS, HUSBAND AND WIFE. 99 

I feel that His embrace slides down 
By thrills through all things made; 

As if my tender mother laid 
On my shut lids her kisses' pressure. 

Half waking me at night, and said, 

“Who kissed you through the dark?" 

What sort of a mother Thomas Carlyle had is reflected in the fact 
that when he was aged and feeble, burdened with the weight of years, 
and left lonely by the death of his wife, talking one day with a friend 
about his weakness and desolation, the old man burst forth in a trem- 
ulous voice that was half humor and half sob, “It’s a mother I want." 
One wishes somebody had been there to sing to him the quaint sweet 
words of the Scotch song: 

Like a bairn to its mither, a wee birdie to its nest, 

I wad fain be ganging noo unto my Saviour’s breast; 

For He gathers in His bosom witless, worthless lambs like me. 

And He carries them Himsel’ to His ain countree. 

There is sanity, reason and the logic of common sense in the words 
of Mark Guy Pearse: “It is reasonable to trust the Power that has 
made a mother. To me a mother is the ‘Fear Not’ of nature, half a re- 
deemer, a certificate and guarantee of God. I will trust the Power that 
makes a mother.” He who creates mothers gives to us distincter and 
mort articulate reason for trusting Him in that tender promise in the 
pages of Isaiah, found in the heart of the austere Old Testament like 
honey in a cleft of the rock. — “The Ripening Experience of Life.” 

“When the Morning Was Now Come Jesus Stood on the Shore.” — 

John 21:4 (216). 

He had been on the shore all the night, if they had but known it. 
We poor navigators and fishermen are tossed upon the nightly deep, the 
dark sea, the troubled waters, and we cannot even see the shore; but 
it is our joy to believe that He who makes the morning is standing 
yonder, and that we shall see Him by-and-by. What is this life of ours 
but a troubled lake, heaving and swelling and tossing, breaking into 
billows and dashing into foam, rising into storms, and occasionally 
falling into a beautiful calm! When our fishing is done, and we give it 
up, and want to get home, yonder the Saviour is standing on the shore 
and saying, “Children.” Have you any Christ on your shore? Have you 
any hope that when your little fishing is done, and you have passed 
through “night” and caught “nothing,” you will see Him on the shore 
who makes the “morning?” It will be a poor, wretched life for you if 
there be not in the midst of it, and round about it, this inspiring hope, 
this sure abiding and transporting confidence. But with such assurance 
all life will be a growing joy, all sorrow a strengthening and ennobling 
sacrament, and death itself shall be welcomed as a transformed enemy 
doing the work of the triumphant Master. — Joseph Parker, D. D, 


100 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


“Blessed Are the Dead That Die In the Lord.” — Rev. 14:13 (217). 

I. The dead that die in the Lord. The term hardly needed much 
nice definition when to live in the Lord meant almost certainly perse- 
cution, and possibly martyrdom. To die in the Lord was the end of 
those who had lived in the Lord, and few were likely to make that pro- 
fession who had not taken up the cross and followed Christ in the way. 
To die in the Lord is to die in possession of all that the Lord, by His 
incarnation and passion, has won for man; to die in the Lord is to pass 
up to live with Him. What life do you take through death to that 
world? Is it a fool’s paradise which you are dreaming of there, or the 
Lord’s? It is simply a question of at-homeness. Blessed are the dead 
that die in the Lord, who have lived with Him here, talked with Him, 
wrought for Him, and have pined for more perfect possession of all that 
makes the holy beauty of His character and glory of His life. 

II. Wherein are they blessed who die in the Lord? What is it 
which transmutes man’s great terror into an angel of benediction, and 
makes that which Nature shudders at a birth into a w'orld of bliss? Here 
we rise into another region; a region of intense, conscious, joyous vitality; 
a region of intelligent, responsible, glorious activity, in which nothing 
that makes the dignity, the grandeur, of the burden of life is laid down, 
but only the pain. (1) Because death is birth to the believer, and birth 
is ever blessed. This is not the noon of life, but its struggling dawn; 
not its summer, but its bleak and wintry spring. Our high life is the 
seed in the ground which is growing, struggling into form. Blessed are 
the dead, for they are born, exiled from the body, at home with the 
Lord. (2) Born out of a life which is a long pain to a life which is a 
long bliss. “We that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened.” 

(3) They pass out of relations and fellowships which are ever changing 
to those which abide and enlarge their ministries through eternity. 

(4) Blessed are they, for they are forever beyond the reach of all that 
may imperil the prize. — J. Baldwin Brown. 

“Lazarus, Come Forth.” — John 11:43 (218). 

This is the sublime conclusion of the touching story of the raising 
of Lazarus. It presents the estimate the Saviour had of prayer. He 
knew His power and how all things were subject to Him; yet when He 
was about to perform this mighty work for the glory of God and the 
comfort of weeping hearts, He first prayed, and that prayer is full of 
confidence and trust. What a lesson to us to do everything with the 
same confident appeal to God (Phil. 4:6)! 

The text again shows the mighty power of Jesus. The greatest, 
the mightiest conqueror of man is death. The most mysterious and irre- 
vocable state is that of the dead. None can conquer in that war. None 
ever attempt to revoke the decree that bids all to enter the grave. We 
may sorrow over the outward tomb, and weep at our own losses; but 
none dream of changing the result. Now the mighty power of Jesus is 
manifest, in that, standing at the dark door of this dread mystery and 
these helpless sleepers, he says, “Come forth;” and there is nothing 
can resist His call. Death, the grave, the unknown sleep, all respond; 


DEATH OF THE MATURE. PARENTS, HUSBAND AND WIFE. 101 


and he that was dead and buried stands again a living man, a loving 
brother. What joy and hope for those who trust in Jesus, not only for 
their loved ones gone before, but for their own glorious life beyond the 
death! “He has the keys of death and of hell.” 

“If In This Life Only We Have Hope in Christ, We Are Of All Men 
Most Miserable.” — 1 Cor. 15:19 (219). 

What is the exact hope respecting the future that we owe to our 
risen Lord? Is it the hope that we shall exist forever? Is our contin- 
uous existence hereafter altogether dependent upon faith in communion 
with the risen Christ? No, this is not what the Apostle meant; our 
immortality is not a gift of the Redeemer, it is a gift of the Creator; 
and it is just as much a part of our being as any of the limbs of our 
body, or as reason, imagination, or any of the natural endowments of 
our mind. 

I. We look forward as reasonable beings to immortality. But to 
what sort of immortality does this anticipation point? Is it, for in- 
stance, (1) the immortality of the race, and does the individual really 
perish at death? No, it is not this to which we men look forward. A 
race of beings does not really live apart from the individuals which com- 
pose it; only a person, only a feeling, thinking, and resolving, cen- 
ter and seat of life can be properly immortal. (2) Is it, then, an 
immortality of fame? How many in each generation could hope to 
share in such an immortality as this? (3) Is it an immortality of good 
deeds? No; the immortality of our actions is not an immortality which 
ever can satisfy the heart or the reason of man, since this yearning for 
immortality is above all things based on a sense of justice. 

II. The hope in Christ is the hope of a blessed immortality. This 
He has won for us by His perfect and sufficient sacrifice on the cross, 
whereby our sins are blotted out; and His cross and His virtue is 
proved to us by His resurrection from the dead, that He lives in order 
that we may live also is the very basis of our hope in Him. Apart from 
this conviction, Christianity is indeed a dream; the efforts and sacri- 
fices of Christian life are wasted; we are the victims of vain delusion, 
and are of all men most miserable. — H. P. Liddon. 

“Jesus Wept.”— John 11:35 (220). 

I. Causes of Christ’s sorrow. 

II. Its peculiar character. 

1. The possession of a soul. 

When we speak of Deity joined to humanity, we do not mean joined 
to a body. Not a body inhabited by Deity, as our bodies are by soul. 
But we mean Deity joined to manhood — body and soul. With a body 
only, Jesus might have wept for hunger, but not wept for sorrow. That 
is neither the property of Deity nor of body, but of soul. 

Humanity in Christ was perfect. The possession of a body enabled 
Him to weary; the possession of a soul capacitated Him to weep. 


102 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


2. The spectacle of human sorrow. And this twofold: 

Death of a friend: “Behold how He loved him.” 

Sorrow of two friends: “When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, 
. . . Jesus wept.” 

The death of His friend was a cause of the sorrow of Jesus. 

Mysterious! Jesus knew that he could raise him. All-knowing wis- 
dom: all-powerful strength. Yet “Jesus wept.” 

This is partly intelligible. Conceptions strongly presented produce 
effects like reality; e. g., we wake dreaming, our eyes suffused with 
tears — know it is a dream, yet tears flow on. 

Conception of a parent’s death. . . . 

Solemn impression produced by the mock funeral of Charles V. . . . 

To say that Jesus wept is only to say that His humanity was per- 
fect; that His mind moved by the same laws as ours. 

Moreover, it was only delay. One day Lazarus would die, and the 
mourning be real. 

Now, observe, the sadness of Jesus for His friend is what is re- 
peated with us all. The news comes — “He whom thou lovest is sick,” 
and then, in two days — “Lazarus is dead.” Startling! Somehow we 
twine our hearts round men we love as if forever. Death and they are 
not thought of in connection. He die! He die! 

It is a shock to find the reality of this awful life; that we are swim- 
ming on a sea of appearances — floating on an eternity that gives way. 
These attachments, loves, etc., they don’t hold; there is no firmness in 
them. We are, and then suddenly are not. Life and death, what are 
they? 

Next, the sorrow of His two friends caused the tears of Jesus. 

Look at this family. Three persons: a brother lost, two surviving 
sisters. 

The sisters’ characters were diverse. Martha found her life in the 
outer world of fact; Mary in the inner world of feeling. They are types 
of the practical and the contemplative. 

Their way of manifesting feeling is different. Martha expressed 
herself outwardly in word, in action, in small acts of attention; she 
loved to discuss earnestly with the intellect the question of the resur- 
rection — contended how things might have been otherwise. Mary did 
not express — felt herself inexpressible; reached truth by the heart, not 
by the mind; lived in contemplation. In manhood, one would have 
found life in the storm of the world; the other in retirement. As stu- 
dents, one would have studied the outward life of man in history; the 
other, philosophy, the causes of things, the world visible, and the 
stranger world within. 

Two links bound these diverse characters together: love to Lazarus, 
attachment to the Redeemer. And this true union — similars in dissimi- 
larity, worlds differing, spheres differing, yet no clashing — bound them 
together by one common pursuit. 

Now one link was gone. Of him, Lazarus, we know little. Only he 
was one whom Jesus loved, and he had the strong attachment of 
such women as Martha and Mary. 


DEATH OF THE MATURE. PARENTS, HUSBAND AND WIFE. 103 


His loss was not an isolated fact. The family was broken up; the 
sun of the system gone; the planets no longer revolving round a center 
harmoniously. The keystone is removed from the arch, and the stones 
are losing their cohesion; for the two minds held together only at points 
of contact. Points of repulsion, too, there were, manifest even in life. 
They could not understand one another’s different modes of feeling: 
Martha complains of Mary at the feast. Lazarus gave them a common 
tie. That removed, the points of repulsion would daily become more 
sharp and salient. 

Over the breaking up of a family Jesus -wept. 

And this is what makes death sad. Let him who calls death a 
trifle remember this — not that one man is gone, but that Bethany is no 
longer Bethany. A blight is there. You open a book, there is a name. 
A day comes, it is a birthday — the chair is vacant. In reverie you half 
rise up, but the name on your lips belongs to none on earth. 

II. Character of Christ’s sorrow: — Spirit in which Jesus saw this 
death. 

Calmly: “Lazarus sleepeth.” It is the world of repose where all is 
placid. 

-4 

Struggling men have tried to forget this restless world, and slum- 
ber like a babe, tired — yea, tired at heart. Lazarus is stretched out to 
his Divine friend’s imagination, but he lies calm. The long day’s work 
is done — the hands are folded. Nothing to fret now* but the “small cold” 
worm. Waves of shadow are flying over the long grass on his grave. 

Friends are gathered to praise, enemies to slander. But praise and 
slander on his ear make no impression. Conscious he is, perhaps, else- 
where; but unconscious of earthly noise. Musketry over grave — requiem 
mass — minstrels making a noise. . . . All this is for the living; the dead 
hear not. But “he sleeps well.” That is the tone of feeling with which 
to stand over the Christian’s death-bed: “Our friend Lazarus sleepeth.” 

Next, sadly. Hence, observe, permitted sorrow. 

Great Nature is wiser than w r e. We recommend weeping, or prate 
about submission, or say all must die; Nature, God, say, “Let nature 
rule, to weep or not.” 

Do you say tears imply selfishness — distrust? I answer: Weep. Let 
grief be law to herself. We infer that grief is no distrust of God — no 
selfishness. Sorrow is but love without its object. 

Next, hopefully. “I go that I may awake him out of sleep; thy 
brother shall rise again.” Not merely calmness, nor sadness, nor sor- 
row, nor despair, but hope. 

Observe, the amount of hope depends on character and imaginative 
power. 

Sanguine minds are elastic; it is very easy for them to blame 
deeper shadow, as if that which is natural spirits were all faith. 

Allowance, too, must be made for imaginative power. That is the 
world of shadows; this the world of experience and recollection. Some 
persons live in the past more than in the future. Others there are who 
travel with the sun ever before them, keeping pace with the sun. 


104 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


Hope will be small when imagination is scanty; but feebleness of 
hope is not feebleness of faith. 

Lastly, in reserve — the reserve of sorrow. 

On the first announcement, Jesus speaks not a word. When He 
met the mourners, He offered them no commonplace consolation. He is 
more anxious to exhibit feeling than to soothe. But Nature had her way 
at last. Yet even then by act more than by word the Jews inferred He 
loved him; “Jesus wept; then said the Jews, Behold how He loved him.” 

There is the reserve of nature and the reserve of grace. 

We have our own English reserve: we do not give way to feelir.g. 
We respect grief when it does not make an exhibition. An Englishman 
is ashamed of his good feelings as much as of his bad. In sarcasm, 
sneer, and hummed tune, tears will be concealed. All this is neither 
good nor bad — it is nature. 

But let it be sanctified; let reserve of nature pass into reserve of 
Christian delicacy. 

Let us add a few words of application. 
f In this there is consolation for us. But consolation is not the privi- 
lege of all sorrow. Christ is at Lazarus’s grave, because Christ had 
been at the sisters’ home, sanctifying their joys and their very meals. 
They had anchored on the rock in sunshine, and in the storm the ship 
held to her moorings. 

It is desolate when the heart is cut away by force, to seek a Saviour. 
He who has lived with Christ will find Christ near in death. 

If you choose duty — God — it is not difficult to die. — Frederick W, 

Robertson, M. A. 


V. DEATH OF PERSONS OF PROMINENCE. 
MEMORIAL DAY. 

REFLECTIONS AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 

Bishop Vincent on Chaplain McCabe (221). 

We come today to recall the career of one of our most brilliant 
and useful ministers — popular, well, and widely known, gifted — and now 
sorely lamented. His death is our loss. His life should be our lesson. 

There has been but one McCabe — chaplain, singer, secretary, pro- 
moter, bishop. The mold was broken when he was cast. But he still 
lives in our memories and in the mansions Christ promised. Bishop 
McCabe had rare power both as orator and singer. He was a wizard 
in his way, a master magician in song and speech with his musical, flex- 
ible, and magnetic voice. His talk was music. In all the outgoings and 
outgivings of his personality there was a mystic power by which at will 
he moved and melted and mastered men. He knew how to open the 
most tightly clasped pocket book and the hardest and most firmly riv- 
eted heart. Men might resolve against his appeals as they enjoyed his 
eloquence but while they smiled he broke rivets and bands and the 
money came. He was a skillful and holy hypnotist. He was subject to 
currents of power from another world, tides that rolled in from the vast 
sea of influence carrying everything before them. He was most versa- 
tile and could do a great variety of things and do them well. Our noble 
chaplain-bishop was incarnated good will. But he could do cruel things 
on occasion but only under the play of impulse or in the interest of 
what he accounted “orthodoxy.” He was what we call a “conservative.” 
One sometimes wonders if such good and loyal souls are really ac- 
quainted with the theories of modern criticism and with the grounds of 
their defense as held by many thoughtful, scholarly, profound and saint- 
ly men in our times. The dear chaplain sang holy songs in a bewitch- 
ing way, made brilliant appeals for gifts to many a worthy cause, 
preached royal sermons, he often jumped at conservative conclusions 
and put all the splendid energy of his personality into their defense as 
though he really understood both sides of the question. He was severe 
in his denunciations and turned humor into cruelty, pouring out his 
indignation in a fashion so extravagant and laughable that he himself 
almost forgot that he was in earnest — as he undoubtedly was all the 
time. It was not an unworthy motive that inspired such severities of 
speech. It was simple loyalty to God’s Word as he understood God’s 
Word. Really he was a fountain of love — love for God and love for 
man. He loved souls both as souls and as folks (and there is a differ- 
ence) — and he won both love and admiration wherever he went. He 
captured people. Under the spell of his eloquence he became their mas- 
ter. They smiled when he smiled, shouted when he sang, and poured out 
all their loose change at his command. 


106 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


I knew him first in the days of the war and heard one of his earliest 
reports of his experience in Libby Prison. He was even then thin and 
his face pale as a result of his confinement in Richmond. One can 
never forget the effect of his wonderful songs as he sang in those days. 
It was the treat of a lifetime to hear him sing Mrs. Howe’s great “Bat- 
tle hymn of the republic” and one could not hear him sing it without 
thinking of him and the occasion as the embodiment of the One Hun- 
dred and Twenty-sixth Psalm. 

He must have had his dark hours. But nobody knew of them. 
Napoleon said, “Men in general are but great children.” Our chaplain- 
secretary-bishop was always a rollicking, cheerful, impulsive, great- 
hearted and wise child — from first to last. He had his faults. When a 
man dies we never recall his weak points or his blunders. I am not 
sure that this omission is wise. 

It is a splendid career — that of a gifted man in the service of man — 
thinking, planning, toiling, persisting — all in the interest of society, of 
the church, of the nation, of the race. Self may have something to do 
with it. Self must have something to do with it. We have no divine 
command to forget self, to repudiate self, to destroy self. We are to 
love our neighbor. But we are to love our neighbor as ourself. It is 
legitimate. It is divinely ordered — this normal, genuine love of self. 
And having this as the basis and bond of personality it is a royal thing 
to have as one’s main life aim the helping of humanity through 
the church, through organized missionary and other philanthropic or- 
ganizations, through political policies, through the everyday illustration 
of commercial and economic wisdom. In such a life nothing is secular. 
“Holiness unto the Lord” is stamped on all the activities of such a man. 
Bishop McCabe was a man of the world, treading the path that leads to 
the other world, singing as he went, dispensing benefits of every kind 
on the way, helping students, relieving poverty, paying debts for otheis. 
His face was lighted with smiles, his movement upward, onward, heaven- 
ward, drawing with the power of a magnet other people to follow him 
as he sought to follow Christ who all His earthly life “went about doing 
good.” 

Such a rare, genuine, ardent, useful, devout man was Bishop Mc- 
Cabe. And he is to be studied from many points of view. He was a 
manysided man. We might study “Charlie McCabe” as a boy, a son, 
a brother, a playmate, a student. What a genial, jolly, adventurous, ag- 
gressive boy he must have been! 

We might study “Mr. McCabe” as a husband, a neighbor, a father, 
a citizen, a financier, a business man. No commercial obligations or 
interests, however, ever took the “boy” out of him! 

We might study the “Rev. C. C. McCabe” as a Christian, a preacher, 
a pastor, a sweet singer of the songs of Zion, an orator — which in a sense 
he certainly was. It must have been a great thing to have him as a 
regular pastor! 


DEATH OF PERSONS OF PROMINENCE. MEMORIAL DAY 107 


A Significant Funeral Service (222). 

The struggle between the Northern and Southern States of America 
closed forever at the funeral of General Grant. The armies of rebellion 
surrendered twenty years before: but the solemn and memorable pageant 
at the tomb of the great Union soldier, where the leading generals of 
the living Union and of the dead Confederacy stood shoulder to shoulder, 
and mingled their tears in a common grief, this historical event marked 
the absolute conclusion of sectional animosity in America. — Selected. 

The Past an Index to the Future (223). 

“And now that it is all over,” said an old, wearied, and dying states- 
man, after a day of sad farewells, “it is not so bad, after all.” The terror, 
the disquietude, is not in the thing suffered, but in our own faithless 
hearts. But if we look back at the past and see how portion after 
portion has become dear and beautiful, can we not look forward with a 
more steadfast tranquility and believe that the love and beauty are all 
there waiting for us, though the old light seems to have been with- 
drawn? — Great Thoughts. 

Rufus Choate’s Immortality (224). 

Dr. Kerr said that when Rufus Choate, one of the greatest of New 
England’s able statesmen, took ship for Europe in search of health, a 
friend said to him as he stepped on board the vessel, “You will be here 
a year hence;” thereby meaning that in a year’s time his health would 
be restored and he would return to his work. “Sir,” said the great law- 
yer, “I shall be here a hundred years hence, and a thousand years 
hence.” In a few days Rufus Choate was dead, having landed in Hali- 
fax unable to continue his voyage. “He that liveth and believeth in me 
shall never die.” 


A Noted Preacher’s Death (225). 

God gathers His jewels out of the world, and they are souls. Christ 
came with His infinite power to help us, and the Holy Spirit daily labors 
with groanings unwordable to perfect individuals fit for the upper and 
better kingdom; and they do become fit for heaven. When the poor 
beggar, unclothed and sick and dying and starving, was to be trans- 
planted, a convoy of angels came glistening from the interstellar spaces 
to take upon their snowy wings and snowy hearts the jewel out of earth’s 
mire, and to bear it home: heaven gained something then, it gained 
much then. And so we repeat the word, “What an addition he is to 
heaven!” The sweet singer of Israel, the psalmist of old, giving the 
keynotes for all the ages and all hearts, so that the dying Christ and the 
dying Huss could take up his word, “Into thy hands I commit my spirit” 

y eSt this singer of old must welcome the singer of today. And what 

a singer he was! He knew the whole gamut of human nature — not one 
note merely, not one. He could break our hearts to tenderness with 
that song, “Those beautiful, beautiful hands, hardened with toil;” and 
how he stirred the heart of childhood with his trundle-bed song! With 
his far vision of the world and of time, he could lure us with his trum- 
pet song, “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.” 


108 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


What a breadth! what a breadth! O that early singer that sang that 
the Lord should triumph gloriously, and that later singer that foresaw 
that every nation that would not serve him should perish, will find large 
reinforcement in our singer when he comes to sing! 

The first word that was said to me in the home, after the solemn 
silence that followed the telegraphic news of our brother’s departure, 
was this, “What an addition he will be to heaven!” Is it possible that 
we should take such a view as this, to see through our blinding tears 
the rainbow glories that are around the throne? O, I think so. There 
are two ways of looking at all things in this life. Yesterday a cloud of 
unusual blackness hung over this part of Evanston, but above it was 
bright. The cloud has passed away. It was only the burning of a tar 
tank, it was not a world in consumption. When Christ descended into 
the dark cloud of human grief, and saw not when again He should 
emerge, it was said on one occasion that even in His circumstances He 
rejoiced in spirit. Why? Because it had been demonstrated that the 
gospel which He came to bring was suited to common men — the babes 
could understand it! And so the great exultant joy welled up in the 
midst of His grief, and for the joy that was set before Him He endured 
the cross, despised the shame and came out to sit on the right hand of 
God. So in our sorrow we may really accept the word, “What an addi- 
tion he is to heaven!” Is it so? We heard recited here a moment since 
all the lavish effort that God could make to magnify a human soul — 
figure after figure, twenty or more of them, brief, sharp as musket 
shots, in all possible endeavor to exalt the dignity and the worth and 
the glory of the child of God who has passed through death. St. Paul, 
knowing that we could not grasp these great possibilities with our pres- 
ent faculties, prayed that these faculties might be enlarged, quickened, 
enlightened — “that the eyes of your understanding may be enlightened 
that you may know the hope of your calling and the excellency of the 
glory of God’s inheritance in His saints.” Yes it is possible that they 
should add a great deal to heaven — a great deal! — Bishop Warren. 


A Minister Estimated By His Successor (227). 

I know of no more searching test for any ministerial career than 
the test which that man can make who comes to a parish where his pre- 
decessor for an entire generation has stamped his personal and spiritual 
characteristics upon his people. Friends, I do not know, I have some- 
times wondered, how consciously you have realized the solemnity and 
the responsibility of your position as guardians of the great reputation 
of your ministers. What you are today largely determines the estimate 
of what he was. Mt. Vernon Church is the principal witness, which can 
neither be distorted no silenced, to this man’s life. You yourselves, by 
the lives you lead, by the things you have said, by the remembered 
phrases you have spoken, by the types of mind and character you repre- 
sent, have brought me into more close and vital contact with Dr. Her- 
rick; have unconsciously revealed to me what must have been the mo- 
tives, ideals and desires that lay behind his outward life, more certainly 


DEATH OF PERSONS OF PROMINENCE. MEMORIAL DAY 109 

and intimately than either you or he could have believed. He, being 
dead, yet speaketh, through you to me, and it is to some of those un- 
conscious revelations that I would now turn. 

First of all, as I have seen him in yourselves and listened to him in 
your conversation, I have perceived that he was pre-eminently a man 
of the Divine Spirit. It would he impossible for me to think of him 
except as unwordly, one whose soul was like a star that dwelt apart. 
I never heard him preach, but I have perceived that his sermons were 
distinguished by spiritual insight and prophetic fire — utterances of a 
life that was both pure and lofty, informed with a transcendant beauty. 
I have perceived that the power of his preaching did not lie in his ac- 
complished delivery, his finished phrases, his accurate English, which 
fitted word to thought like hand to glove. It was not the truly admir- 
able form; it was the undefiled substance, the subtle evidence of a pres- 
ent God which made him great. I have been told by many living lips 
how marvelously this manifested itself in his public prayers; I did not 
need that testimony; his own speech in you had told me long before.. 

There is a bitter experience which more than one minister has been 
called upon to endure when he has entered a new parish. The field has 
appeared fair for labor; has seemed to offer a rich opportunity for 
growth and service, but when he has seen it from within, he has found 
that it had a name that it lived and was dead. There was an imposing 
edifice and a fine equipment and large organization, but no vitality. It 
loomed large in the denominational Year-Book, but the heart of it was 
gone. There was no contact with the Source of Power. Tragic is the 
lot of him called to such a parish and inevitable his estimate of his 
predecessor. He places him among the large and dreary company of 
those who have degenerated from living voices into professional speak- 
ers. 

But here, dear people, has been the entire reversal of this experi- 
ence. One might almost transpose the words of Revelation, and say 
that this church had a name that it was dead, and behold it was alive! 
I am glad that the fitting public opportunity is now given to me to re- 
cord that my first unmistakable impressions of this parish were those 
of its suppressed but profound vitality; its unusual spiritual power. I 
therefore perceived these many months ago that he who preceded me 
here was one who had made his ministry not a business, but a life. You 
have been the irrefutable witnesses to a lofty and devoted leader who 
walked with God as long as he walked with you. Your quiet earnest- 
ness; your unobtrusive devotion to a simple and real religion; your un- 
usual and significant loyalty more to the office than to the man, more to 
the church than to him who for a time serves the church, all this is a 
great indorsement of the single-minded, self-effacing, finely-tempered 
ministry of Dr. Herrick. 

It is meet, therefore, that we should do him honor, and that I, too, 
should have my especial and profound cause to join with you in honor- 
ing him whom we have lost. He has made ready our way and prepared 
our path. In these last two years, when this old church has been once 
more renewing her youth, enlarging her activities, ministering to an 
ever-increasing constituency; on this very day, when realizing her new 


110 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


found strength, she is shaking herself free from an encumbrance of the 
past and turning to the future with unhampered spirit, let us remember 
the ancient word: “Others have labored, and we have entered into the 
fruit of their labors.” We are building the edifice for which he made 
provision; what we are doing now he, by the grace of God, made possible 
for us to do, and so we ought to pay him honor. 

I hope the time will never come when the sense of his loss, to you 
who knew him, will grow less, or when the longing for that benign and 
gracious presence, wise with many years and tender through much ex- 
perience, will have died away. Our affection and loyalty for him is one 
of the most precious, necessary and beautiful elements in our dear fel- 
lowship here. O let us keep poignant the consciousness of our great 
past and our great men; let us keep that consciousness as a precious in- 
heritance and a powerful incentive. — Rev. Albert P. Fitch on Samuel E. 
Herrick, D. D. 


Hungry For a Hope (228). 

I have been told that on Sunday following the death of Lincoln, 
the American churches were crowded to the doors — all hungry to hear 
some word of assurance that though the great martyr had gone out into 
the mist and the mystery, that still somewhere he lived. The American 
people that day were willing to believe anything regarding that future 
save that he, who had led a nation through fire and war to the edge 
of the promised land of peace into which he was not permitted to enter, 
should find out in the unknown no path for his patient feet and no 
crown for his kingly head. Deep in every heart is an unsatisfied hunger 
which only eternity can explain and only an eternity can meet. The 
little girl with her arms full of flowers, which she has gathered, believes 
that just beyond the brook and over beyond the grassy knoll are larger 
and brighter ones than she has yet found; the young man, whatever be 
the success that has crowned his efforts, believes that over the blue 
range of mountains that lie on the horizon a larger success awaits him; 
and the old man comes down with tottering steps to the beach of an eb- 
bing tide and believes beyond the waves is a land full of the victories 
and the love which this world denied. God has placed in our hearts a 
hunger which only eternity can satisfy. — Selected. 

A Great Man’s Death a Heavy Loss (229). 

An extraordinary personality has gone out from our midst. It is 
impossible to measure his character and life by the ordinary standards 
which we use for measuring men. Our brother has left a vacancy of im- 
mense proportions — a vacancy which no other man in the denomination 
can fill. We could lose a great pulpiteer — one with magnetic eye, an 
eloquent tongue and natural oratorical power; one upon whose burning 
words thousands hang enraptured — but we could find another to take 
his place. We could surrender one of our executive leaders, and would 
mourn his going away, but we could find another of pre-eminent admin- 
istrative ability who could quickly and successfully assume his duties. 
One of our chief educators might slip away — one who had profoundly 
impressed the intellectual life of the church, and who had been an in- 


DEATH OF PERSONS OF PROMINENCE. MEMORIAL DAY 111 


spiration to thousands of young men and women in our midst — but we 
could put our hands on another well qualified by natural endowment and 
training to take up the fallen scepter. We could lose one man with 
burning evangelistic consecration and zeal, and a tongue of flame — an 
irresistible pleader with unsaved men, an incarnation of convincing and 
persuasive speech — but could we not find another into whose hands this 
work might be committed? But a man has fallen in our midst who was 
so absolutely unique, so manysided, capable of so many kinds of leader- 
ship, so resourceful, so large of vision, so consecrated to his tasks, so 
inspirational in his leadership, and so tremendously devoted to his mis- 
sion, that no man comes forward who is even willing to be considered 
a possible substitute. — Berry. 

A Remarkable Tribute to a Remarkable Minister (230). 

Like Abraham he went where he was called, and was faithful in all 
things. 

Like Moses, he had led the people of God from doubts and fears to con- 
fidence for success in the face of any difficulties. 

Like Joshua, he loved his country, and fought and suffered for its suc- 
cess. 

Like Jonathan, he met many a discouraged brother, and cheered him by 
giving him strength from God. 

Like David, he sang the church to victory, and shouted on the battle of 
blessed triumph. 

Like Isaiah, he constantly pointed the church to brighter days and bet- 
ter things in the future. 

Like Daniel, he was true through life to the teachings of his boyhood 
days. 

Like Malachi, he believed in bringing all the tithes into the Lord's store- 
house. 

Like John the Baptist, he delighted to cry to the multitudes: “Behold 
the Lamb of God." 

Like St. John, he believed with all his soul that Jesus Christ was the 
Son of God. 

Like Peter, he honored the Holy Ghost by teaching the doctrine of the 
operation of the divine spirit upon the souls of men. 

Like Paul, he rejoiced that Jesus died for all men, and he did his best to 
let the world know this blessed truth with pen, song, and ser- 
mon. He pled with the church to send the gospel to all the 
world. 

Like Jesus, his Divine Master, whom he followed daily, “he went about 
doing good." 

Like Enoch, “he walked with God, and he was not, for God took him." 

Blessed man. Consecrated Christian, true to his God, his country, 
his church and his fellow man. 

Enthusiastic for Methodism, he sought to inspire others to be of 
like enthusiasm, working to the very last moment of his busy life for the 
interest of the unsaved world. 

The world is richer because he lived, worked, and died in the faith 
of the Lord Jesus Christ. When he died there was only one place he 


112 


THOUGHTS FOH MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


could go. That place was heaven. And there he is today. And it seems 
to me I hear him singing, “Worthy the Lamb that was slain for us.” 
Amen and Amen. — Rev. Robert Stephens on Chaplain McCabe. 

The Death of a Christian Lawyer (231). 

This occasion is to me full of solemnity and also full of inspiration. 
It is full of solemnity in that it reminds us that, like Brother Weaver, 
we shall some day, perhaps not far away, be called on to close our law 
books for the last time, to write our last brief, to make our last plea 
in the courts of this world, and to stand ourselves for final judgment in 
the supreme court of the universe. 

“With equal step unpartial Fate 
Knocks at the palace and the cottage gate,” 

calling lawyer and litigant to their last long home. 

We are today reminded anew that all of us shall, one by one, be car- 
ried to the tomb by those who in their turn shall follow us. 

Often amid the clash of conflict and the whirl of business we may 
be tempted to forget the gravity, if not the certainty, of this last great 
call. But we have met to pay tribute to a man who always kept upon 
his lips and in his heart a ready and a full and fearless answer to the 
last great summons. For Mr. Weaver carried in his bosom the deep 
assurance of his Master’s guidance, love, and mercy. He carried it in 
his heart, and we saw it in his daily life. His face among us was the 
face of one who prayed in his closet to be a true brother to his fellow- 
man. 

Being a man of great faith, he was a man of great prayer. He 
walked and talked with the God of his fathers. He practiced law and 
read books; but better than that, he kept daily communion with the 
Great Spirit of all the good laws and all good books. 

In his love of learning, in his honesty of dealing, in his purity of 
purpose, in his devotion to truth, and in his allegiance to virtue he was 
an ideal lawyer. He showed the world anew that a lawyer could and 
should be a Christian gentleman. Brother Weaver believed that a man’s 
first allegiance was to his Creator, and that if a man be true to his God 
he cannot be false to his brother. 

Now and then in modern times we read a long notice of the life and 
death of some prominent citizen, with never a word that he kept his 
hand in the hand of God. Fulsome words and fragrant flowers scattered 
over the grave of such a man make us doubly sad at the greatness of the 
failure. But here we meet to praise a lawyer who made the law of God 
the rule of his life. Mr. Weaver excelled in that pre-eminent and para- 
mount virtue which keeps men close to God. Here we can strew sweet 
words and flowers, well knowing that they are no sweeter than the life 
and memory of our departed brother. 

“Howe'er it be, it seems to me 
’Tis only noble to be good; 

Kind hearts are more than coronets, 

And simple faith than Norman blood.” 


DEATH OF PERSONS OF PROMINENCE. MEMORIAL DAY 113 


We often hear, but seldom follow, the old Latin motto: Nil de mor- 
tuis nisi bonum. Today we could discard the restrictions of that motto; 
yet none could name Mr. Weaver but to praise him. 

It is inspiring to remember the virtues of his life, and it is refresh- 
ing and inspiring to witness this unusually large assemblage of lawyers 
to pay tribute to the memory of a great Christian lawyer. It bespeaks 
our love and reverence for truth and honor, for righteous living and true 
fidelity to high ideals. It bespeaks our hope for an early day when 
every lawyer will daily practice the supreme law of life and love. 

I am glad that, though we cannot touch his hand, we still can feel 
his life. His body rests in peace beneath the fading flowers, but he still 
lives within our hearts. His spirit is in our midst, even as we wait to 
speak anew his virtues; and I am quite sure and glad that the good influ- 
ence of his life will never, never die. 

The very presence here to-day of so many busy lawyers and citi- 
zens is another proof of the truth of the sweet words of the poet: 

‘There is no death! An angel form 
Walks o’er the earth in silent tread, 

And takes our best loved things away. 

And then we call them dead. 

But ever near us, though unseen, 

The dear immortal spirits tread; 

For all the boundless universe 

Is life. There are no dead.” — Selected. 


A Distinguished Author (232). 

Let us thank God that he printed so much and left so large a residue 
of his wisdom in form for our permanent use. Let us thank God that 
we have had him, and that we shall know where to find him hereafter. 
One day a friend said to Dr. Horace Bushnell: “Dr. Bushnell, do you 
know I think that when you come to heaven at last and are walking up 
the streets of gold, that it is not unlikely that one of the archangels, or 
someone else near the Master, will say to him, ‘Master, there comes a 
man you know’;” and the great old man bowed his head and said, “I 
trust so, but I trust also that when I come to see Him I shall be not 
altogether unacquainted with Him, either.” So may we not say of the 
thing which has taken place this week, that someone may have said to 
our loving Lord and Master, while our prince in Israel walked into His 
presence, “There comes a man you know,” and that he who had not 
only written of the aspects of the Christian experience but experienced 
the phases of the grace of Christ looked into the face of his loving Lord 
with a consciousness that he knew Him also. “Let the beauty of the 
Lord our God be upon us: and establish thou the work of our hands upon 
us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.” “So teach us to num- 
ber our days (whether they reach four-score years or not) that we 
(also) may apply our hearts unto wisdom.” — Selected. 


114 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


A Good Man a ReveaJer of God. (233)— “God alone is great!” ex- 
claimed the eloquent French preacher pointing to the dead king. The 
saying is a true one, but the greatness and beauty of God are best re- 
vealed in his children. 


An Influential Churchman (234). 

What a superb transition from the highest range of official duty to 
the heavenly heights! Our beloved brother on Saturday morning last 
had his mind quickened and his heart warmed in loftiest thoughts con- 
cerning these great interests which had engaged his attention from his 
childhood relating to the salvation of the world. On Sabbath morning 
he engaged in his beloved employment of preaching the gospel in one 
of the churches of this city, from a missionary point of view, and twelve 
hours later the weary pilgrim was walking the streets of gold. I think 
it glorious! The dark side of any such way intrudes itself upon our 
thought instead of the bright side. His stately form, his noble mien, his 
measured wise words, his bright sparkling eyes, these are gone from 
us and lie still and cold today and in a few days the solemn words will 
be said over him in his distant grave, “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” 

But there is another side to all this. We must gather some flowers 
to comfort this hour and gather them in very few words. I do not 
think, I cannot think of such an hour as this as an hour of sadness 
chiefly, and sorrow and regret. This is one of our brothers cut down 
and cut off as one of our coworkers, but exalted and crowned. 


“There is no death; what seems so is transition — 
This life of mortal is but the suburb of the life elysian, 
Whose portal we call death.” 


Did not our Lord say: “Whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall 
never die?” We might gather comfort from the thought of what he 
was, or what he is, of what we are, and of what we are to be. — Selected. 

The Men Who Heed (235). 

While sordid, self-seeking humanity is immersed in the things of 
gain and pleasure, noble souls devote themselves to the service of Christ 
and the alleviation of human needs. The cry of human need is the voice 
of God. How many there are who hear that voice and gather nothing. 
We see the rum traffic dragging its victims down to everlasting ruin, and 
we gather nothing. We see corruption in politics, graft in every place, 
as well as men in places of public trust, who fatten on the spoils of 
office, and we gather nothing. We see the poor herded like cattle in 
places which make virtue well nigh impossible, and we gather nothing. 
We see the growing tendency to lawlessness and the city overrun with 
thugs and thieves, and we gather nothing. A thousand needs with gaunt 
forms and heavy tread go trooping past, and we gather nothing, but go 
our way to make money, have a good time, bask in the sunshine of the 
goddess of pleasure and indulge ourselves in the delights of sensuous 
living. 


DEATH OF PERSONS OF PROMINENCE. MEMORIAL DAY 115 


Dominating Characteristics (236). 

If I were asked to give in a word our brother’s dominating charac- 
teristic I would say that it was his perennial optimism; in other words, 
his unfaltering faith, for (the dictionary to the contrary, notwithstand- 
ing) faith and optimism are about the same thing. Our friend was a 
magnificent believer. He was little troubled with doubts; he believed 
in God; he believed in people; he believed in the church; he believed in 
the Bible; he believed in the gospel; he believed in the conquering 
power of Jesus and he looked confidently to his triumph all over the 
world. He was as sure that the King is preparing to reign on the earth 
tomorrow as he was that the sun would rise tomorrow — that is why he 
was so sunny; faith works that way. Faith and hope are very near 
neighbors; doubt and despair also live close together. 

In all my acquaintance I never knew a more kindly man. His ten- 
derness was beautiful. His sympathies went out toward multiplied ob- 
jects of need. How charitable he was in his judgments of others! How 
intensely he loved his friends! Will anyone attempt in this presence to 
estimate the measure of his benefactions? — Selected. 

Huxley and Spencer (237). 

To Morley in 1883 (vol. II, 62), Huxley wrote: The great thing one 
has to wish for as time goes on is vigor as long as one lives, and death 
as soon as vigor dies. It is a curious thing that I find my dislike to the 
thought of extinction increase as I get older and nearer the goal. It 
flashes across me at all sorts of times with a sort of horror. 

Men of Two Worlds (238). 

The Pilgrims were open-minded. The windows of their souls were 
flung wide to the sunrisings; and while, it may be, they saw no flaming 
visions, yet in the radiance of the instreaming light they saw things 
with their own eyes. They had attent ears, and notes of the old, but 
ever new song of the morning stars were caught by them and turned into 
music for the day’s march. They had experiences in the Mount to 
which their bronzed but shining faces bore testimony. They knew 
Christ because they believed Him, and they believed Him with an in- 
creasing confidence and tenacity because they knew Him. The Spirit 
witnessed with their spirits; and because of His indwelling they were 
able to bear personal witness to the truth. Their contact with the 
Father in all the leading ways in which He comes into manifestation to 
His children was direct. Things divine were real to their apprehension. 
They would not have made the statement with the same assurance; but 
“We know” would have had just as much pertinency on the 
lips of these men as on the lips of the great apostle. They 
did not know so much; but what they did know they knew 
with equal certainty. The gates of their souls turned easily 
on their hinges; and it took but a touch of the unseen Hand to swing 
them open and secure admission for thoughts from on high. In the dis- 
closures of still hours, in earnest meditation, and through intercourse 
with God and with one another, they were made rich in heavenly lore. 
Still the Pilgrims were not mystics. They used all the faculties they 


116 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


possessed in quest of the truth. Reason and feeling, faith and patience, 
activity and serene passiveness were all brought into requisition to se- 
cure a better understanding of the character and will of God. They 
searched the Scriptures. They meditated and prayed. They studied 
providences and compared opinions. — Frederick A. Noble, in “The Pil- 
grims.” 


Memorial Day (239). 

Our heroes — how many and brave and self-sacrificing they were! 
Dr. Henry Clay Trumbull, late editor of the “Sunday School Times/* 
tells of one of them: 

It was before Richmond. He was Major Camp, of the 10th Connect- 
icut, of which regiment Dr. Trumbull was the chaplain. The major and 
the chaplain were bosom friends. An assault had been ordered. Major 
Camp had been absent on other duty. But just before the assault he ap- 
peared, wiping from his face the perspiration caused by his exertions 
to join his regiment. As he came up the chaplain’s face fell with dis- 
appointment. Reading his look — they were so intimate they called each 
other by their first names — Major Camp said quietly and tenderly, 
“What is the matter, Henry? Has anything happened?” “No, but I’m 
sorry you have returned for this assault,” the chaplain answered. “Oh! 
don’t say so, my dear fellow; I thank God I’m back.” “But I’m afraid for 
you,” said the chaplain. “Well, you wouldn’t have the regiment go in 
with me behind, would you? No, no; in any event I thank God I am here/’ 
replied the major. Then the major went about with the cheerfulest face 
and tone encouraging the men. The ordered moment for the assault ap- 
proached. The left of the second line was assigned to Major Camp. “May 
I not as well take the left of the front line, Colonel?” quietly asked Major 
Camp of the commanding officer. “Certainly, if you prefer it,” was the 
colonel’s reply. This more dangerous place Major Camp took because it 
gave him better chance to lead and encourage the men. The signal for 
the assault was given. The cheers of the men rang out. The friends 
clasped hands. “Goodby, Henry. Goodby,” warmly said Major Camp. 
That “goodby” sent a chill to the chaplain’s heart. Never before in a 
score and a half of battles had that word been said. The chaplain fol- 
lowed after the major; with great difficulty he caught up with him. “You 
do not doubt your Saviour?” the chaplain asked. “No, no, dear fellow, 
I do trust Jesus, fully, wholly,” was the reply. 

The chaplain went about his work among the wounded and the dy- 
ing. Major Camp pressed on; stood a moment to reform a broken line; 
became thus a more easy mark for the enemy’s bullet; the ball pierced 
his lungs; he fell — dead as by a lightning’s flash. 

Afterward Dr. Trumbull wrote his noble history under the title, “The 
Knightly Soldier.” So that young life was gloriously finished for this 
world. 

But do not let us forget the nameless heroes who never won such 
chronicle. Upon hundreds of thousands of unknown graves on this Me- 
morial Day the flowers will be strewed. The names of them may not be 
told, but their deeds and the results of them remain. Major Camp is but 


DEATH OF PERSONS OF PROMINENCE. MEMORIAL DAY 117 


a more evident specimen among a vast company. They labored in the 
awful clash of battle; their blood cemented the Union and rescued lib- 
erty. They labored and we have entered into their labors. 

Certainly Decoration Day should make us hold in ever-enduring 
and grateful memory the patient, strong, loving, matchless President, 
the chief leader through those red years. — C. Wayland Hoyt, D. D. 

Patriotism's Ideals (240). 

Our country calls not for the life of ease, but for the life of strenu- 
ous endeavor. Let us, therefore, boldly face the life of strife, resolute 
to io our duty well and manfully; resolute to uphold righteousness by 
deed and by word; resolute to be both honest and brave, to serve high 
ideals, yet to use practical methods. — Theodore Roosevelt. 

The Expansive Pressure of Life. (241) 

Of the countless suggestions and witnesses which come trooping to 
our door when we open it to these questions, I wish to seize on one. I 
want to emphasize the fact that the widening consciousness of life as 
something ever beyond ourselves, at the same time deepens the con- 
sciousness and worth of life within ourselves. The more you get beyond 
your narrow and selfish individuality, the more of an individual you be- 
come. Life everywhere grows in dignity and worth as it ceases to be 
ephemeral. In proportion as life is projected upon a large scale does it 
acquire interest and value. As the stage is widened, it invites to a more 
dignified performance, just as the great stage at the Auditorium at once 
connects itself in our minds with a different spectacle and a different 
treatment from that which would be possible upon the tiny stage on 
wheels where the itinerant showman presents his puppet-shows at coun- 
try fairs. When the theater in which the drama of life is enacted be- 
comes great enough, it calls for greatness of action. If a man can share 
the purpose which shapes the w r orld; if he can be raised up to think the 
thoughts of God; if he can dream of infinite excellence, and plan for 
deeds that live, then his own personal life begins to stretch out to com- 
pass that which he can see and dream and be. Putting on immortality 
is another way of putting on individuality. Eternal life is the necessary 
complement of an adequate and abundant personal life. It would seem 
as if the expansive pressure of new values and new ideals must push the 
door open on the further side of life. — Selected. 

Our Place in the World. (242) 

There is, no doubt, a touch of melancholy often in the moment 
when we realize that a large part of our work may not produce its har- 
vest till after we are dead and gone. Fain would we see the outcome 
with our own eyes. Gladly would we take part in the gains as well as in 
the labor. But the magnanimous spirit rises eventually over such a nat- 
ural weakness. The unselfish man will not suffer himself long to be de- 
pressed or paralyzed by narrow considerations of this kind, preferring 
to reflect, as Christ suggests, that God, the great Master of the world’s 
harvests, couples him with the future as with the past, and that no life 
fails to be a cause as well as an effect, stretching forward into the mor- 


118 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


row as it reaches back into the past. It is this outlook which, above all 
things, lends a certain grace and breadth to human life, investing it 
with something of the long farsight and patience that belong to God him- 
self. It throws on our existence here a richer light than if we merely 
sought to explain it all from the dominating present that lies between 
the cradle and the grave. For as half of life’s wisdom depends on the 
knowledge of how far our place and responsibility extend, and of the 
precise limits at which our function ceases to be of use, so the other half 
almost may be said to consist in the sight of a great, growing order in 
which each one of us has some part of his own to play, some duty to 
discharge. 

“My brothers, ’neath the eternal Eyes 
One human joy shall touch the just — 

To know their spirits’ heirs arise, 

And lift their purpose from the dust: 

The father’s passion arms the son, 

And the great deed goes on, goes on.” 

It is the sum of that continuous process which is meant to form a 
sober exhilaration for us men in our work — “That both sower and reaper 
may rejoice together.” — Rev. James Moffatt. 

The Tombs of the Great (243), i 

After I had wandered through the vast edifice, the verger asked me 
whether I would not like to see the crypt, and I readily assented. But 
I soon regretted that I had done so, for as he opened the doorway that 
led to the dark recesses of the vaults there met me a cold, chilly atmos- 
phere, heavy laden with the mouldy smell of corruption and death. I 
was ashamed to show my reluctance after having asked to see the 
burial place of the nation’s great men, and descended a winding stair- 
case. 

The darkness was so dense that I could not see a foot in front of me, 
but the verger called to me that I would find an iron railing at hand, 
and by following that I would be guided to the crypt. I descended, then, 
into the darkness of the tombs. 

On reaching the bottom I was surrounded on all sides by black 
vaults, but in the distance I could discern a light, on approaching which 
I found that the crypt really opened upon the cloister gardens of the 
whole cathedral. There the glorious spring sunshine was bringing flow- 
ers into bloom, and in the midst of the garden there was a beautiful 
fountain playing, and then I realized how, through darkness, I had come 
to the bright glory of the spring sunshine. 

And thus it was that Christ upon the cross, after descending step by 
step in His humility, passed into the gloom of darkness. I can imagine 
that as He reached out His hand in the darkness it rested upon the will 
of God; and as He descended into the grave His soul cried out, “Thou 
wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt Thou suffer Thine holy one 
to see corruption. Thou wilt show me the path of life; in Thy presence 
is fulness of joy; at Thy right hand there are pleasures forevermore.” 
Thus, through the darkness of the grave, Christ came into the light of 
the resurrection morning. — Rev. F. B. Meyer 


DEATH OF PERSONS OF PROMINENCE. MEMORIAL DAY 119 


True Patriotism. (244) — That patriotism is purest that disregards 
opportunities for personal honor, and falters not when called to do the 
difficult duty, though it must be done in obscurity, far from the blaze of 
public approval. Patriotism burns brightest in the unselfish heart. 
— Selected. 


Our Heritage of Love and Sacrifice (245). 

Who planted the elms which give their overarching glory to every 
New England village of the older day? Not those who now walk be- 
neath their shadows, but far-seeing, kindly men who knew that they 
could never walk beneath their shadows, but that their children might. 

Who founded the colleges and schools? Were they instituted by 
men who hoped to enter there as learners themselves? Nay, but by 
men who so far realized the value of sound learning that they were 
able at real sacrifice to lay the foundations of the future. They, too, 
were a part of the vast company of men who had faith and who greeted 
the promise from afar. 

And I read the heroism of this faith also in the eyes of each gen- 
eration, as it gathers its children to its heart and looks into their eyes 
with yearning and hope. There is something sublime and beautiful in 
this faith that lingers with us — the faith that our children will con- 
tinue and complete the things which are so meager and so incomplete 
in us. I see mothers toiling in loving patience for their children, merg- 
ing their own happiness in theirs. I see fathers carrying heavier burdens 
that their boys may be well equipped for life. I recall sacrifices that 
my own father made because of his great desire that his boys might 
start with a better equipment than himself; and I remember that it is 
only one of countless illustrations, where a better education for the 
children, or some added happiness for them, meant the diminution of 
something for those who were making the sacrifice. And when the 
meaning of it sweeps over me at times, it seems as though it would 
be the crime of patricide itself not to be loyal and faithful to the trust 
committed, and the heritage of love and sacrifice received. — Rev. Fred- 
erick E. Dewhurst. 


The Choir Invisible. (246) 

Around is decay and death casts its shadow over all. The days 
come and go and seem to carry with them almost all of life. We labor 
and see so little of results. If we accumulate of earthly good, we know 
how uncertain is our tenure of it. And so much of our labor never as- 
sumes tangible form. We seem to be throwing our strength into a 
flowing stream by which it is swept away. But it is not so. That which 
is beyond our horizon does not cease to be. Life’s greatest powers are 
those which cannot be measured by visible and accumulated results; 
they belong to the sphere of the spiritual. Evil or good, they project 
themselves into the unseen, and do so with a power that never exhausts 
itself. The word spoken lives after the sound dies away. It has entered 
another life and lives in it, The touch of the hand, expressing warm 


120 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


sympathy, leaves an influence that remains long after the pressure has 
ceased. The kind act writes itself in the heart in letters that cannot 
be obliterated. 

Herein is the great joy and the reward of a faithful minister of the 
Gospel. Weary and discouraged he returns from the pulpit to his study, 
feeling he has labored in vain, and yet at a later time, he meets that 
sermon, lifted up and glorified in the Christian life of a person of whom, 
it may be, he had no knowledge when the sermon was preached. He has 
his earnest longings, which may not be realized in himself, but they 
have quickened others to like aspirations and to better living. A min- 
ister may burn his sermons, but he cannot his ministry. No fire can 
consume the love he awakened. No change of time can obliterate what 
he has spoken in the name of Christ. — Selected. 

The Immortality of Influence. (247) 

Savonarola, when he was about to die at the stake, strengthened his 
brethren of St. Mark’s with these words: “I am certain that if I must 
die, I shall be able to aid you in heaven more than I have been able to 
do on earth. The work of the Lord will ever go forward, and my death 
will only hasten it.” And therein he uttered a large part of the philos- 
ophy of history. This appears most impressively when one thoughtfully 
asks, Who are today the mightiest men in the world’s affairs? For in 
our answer we cannot name any of our contemporaries; we are bound 
to name others whom we call the dead; as Washington and Lincoln, 
who are more potent now in politics than any living politicians; Shake- 
speare, who is still the supreme schoolmaster wherever our English 
tongue is spoken, affecting the mentality of millions who never even 
read his works; John Wesley, whose influence is both perpetuated and 
multiplied in the largest of the Protestant sects; Martin Luther, whose 
name is significant not only of great theological distinctions, but whose 
career still accounts for the existing boundaries of the great European 
nations; and greater than these, a certain Jewish tentmaker, itinerant, 
fugitive, almost unheeded by his own generation, now in his grave these 
two thousand years, under whose spell the whole civilized world still 
worships and thinks, loves and longs, lives and dies, Saul of Tarsus, 
Paul the Apostle — these, and the One whose name is above every name, 
were not only the great of their times; they are the great of our times. 
To lack anything contributed by the living would not so far affect us 
as suddenly to lose out of life what we have received from these dead 
who are not dead. 

And these “immortal dead who live again in lives made better by 
their presence” — these are not the few whose names we thus may call, 
but the millions now nameless from whom the world which has forgotten 
them has yet derived the greater part of its inheritance of blessing and 
truth. They wrought as humbly as we must do, but they wrought in the 
Holy Ghost, and our work, too, if wrought in Him, may be as potent 
as theirs, and like theirs, be prolonged into an immortal influence. So 
may we “join the choir invisible whose music is the gladness of the 
world.” — William M. Balch, D. D. 


DEATH OF PERSONS OF PROMINENCE. MEMORIAL DAY 121 


Memorial Day (248). 

Today all over this land many of our people are engaged as we are 
in a memorial service of the soldier dead, and they are scattering blos- 
soms and flowers over their graves. It will do them no good, but it will 
do us good. There ought to be many lessons learned today, and much 
good result from it — lessons of love and devotion for the beautiful land 
God has given us, of respect, affection and honor for the survivors who 
are yet with us. There are voices, quiet voices that come to us from all 
over the land; from the grave of Revolutionary sire and all those who 
in after years followed them in battle, and all unite in bidding us to be 
devoted to the flag, true to country, valiant in her defense. Let us honor 
the volunteer soldier of our land! Let us reverently cover his grave to- 
day with tokens of our affection! Let us remember the living, too; 
those who, maimed in any way, are among us, and those, too, who may 
have suffered less in wounds amid the fortunes of war. Their number is 
lessening, not one by one only, but companies and regiments of the Boys 
in Blue are dropping out every year. They are growing old, too, those 
that remain. Their sons and daughters are beginning to take the places 
in life of the past generation. The war of the rebellion, like those of oth- 
er years, is rapidly receding from our vision. A new generation is coming 
into action. May they prove as worthy of their trust as the past genera- 
tions have been. 

Thus, my friends, have thoughts come clustering to my mind as I 
pondered upon Memorial Day. It is the soldiers’ day. How I honor them! 
What great men they were! May they never cease, in spirit at least, 
to exist in this fair land, so that when valor is required to preserve the 
land, our sons may ever be ready. 

Strew the graves with flowers! Bring them on, and kindly, gently, 
lovingly, lay the chaplets here and there. And, as you see the folds of 
the beautiful flag that our boys followed — for which they died — swear 
by the God of your Fathers that never an act, never a word, never a 
thought shall come from you that shall sully its glory or that may tend 
to its disgrace. — J. M. Kendig, D. D. 

Greatness and Goodness (249). 

That moral excellence is a condition of efficacy in the highest 
things is a truth perceived in spheres outside the Church. Did not Milton 
assure us that the poet must first be a good man? In one of his letters to 
the Lady Harriet Don, Burns writes concerning his engagement in the 
Excise, “One advantage I have in this new business is the knowledge it 
gives me of the various shades of character in man — consequently as- 
sisting me in my trade as a poet.” It was rather thus in the line of sen- 
sual indulgence that his finest senses were blurred and the poet de- 
graded in the man. Ruskin steadily taught that the first qualification for 
great art was to look on foulness with horror. Professor Tyndall insis- 
ted that character, no less than mind of the highest order, must distin- 
guish the successful researcher. After recounting the discoveries of 
Berzelius, Regnault, and Joule, he adds, “There is a morality brought to 
bear upon such matters, which, in point of severity, is probably without 


122 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


a parallel in any other domain of intellectual action.” To the same effect 
Novalis wrote long before: “Let him, therefore, who would arrive at a 
knowledge of nature, train his moral sense; let him act and conceive in 
accordance with the noble essence of his soul; and, as if of herself. Na- 
ture will become open to him.” Blessed are the pure, for they see 
deepest and surest, they see the best of everything, and give the best re- 
port of it; and thus being and doing best serve their race. What, then, 
intellectual observers see with more or less clearness and maintain 
with more or less emphasis, revelation discerns with open vision and 
affirms with absolute assurance, that the highest and most effective 
servants of humanity are the pure in heart, the good, the true, the loving, 
the spiritual and godly, in a word the Christlike. In such men God is 
revealed and glorified. Great men raise our conception of man; good 
men raise our conception of God, He is magnified in them. — Watkinson 

He That Doeth the Will of God Abideth Forever (250). 

At East Northfield, over the grave of the great Evangelist, there is 
an inscription fraught with the one invincible assurance of immortality: 
“He that doeth the will of God abideth forever.” In these words the 
culminating evidences of the great fact culminate. It is the proof of 
proofs. Because the doing of the will of God must ever go one, the doer 
of it must go on in its doing. 

It is an axiom of physics that a moving body will continue moving 
until stopped by some opposing force. Friction and gravitation quickly 
arrest the flight of the cannon-shot, but the planet flies for ages of ages 
through the frictionless ether. The spiritual world, no less than the 
physical, has its axiomatic law of motion. We see the conscious doing 
of God’s will in active progress. Their is nothing in the nature of things 
to arrest it, for, as Augustine said, “God is the nature of things.” It 
must simply go on, the doing, and so the doer. It is this axiom of spirit- 
ual progress which Christian faith asserts in the Apostolic formula, “He 
that doeth the will of God continueth forever.” — The Outlook. 

He Died a Brave Man (251). 

In my original company, raised at the beginning of the war, was A 
man of wealth and influence, about forty-five years old. He was blessed 
with a devoted wife and eleven children. His eldest son enlisted with 
him, and when we marched away we passed by his plantation. There at 
the gate were his wife and the other ten children, each of them waving 
the flag, even the baby. In our first battle the young man fell, shot through 
the body. “Tom,” said a comrade, “are you badly hurt?” “Yes,” he said; 
“I am shot through the body. Give my love to my mother.” As his gal- 
lant spirit fled, I could hear his father cheering on the men. He was only 
a quartermaster-sergeant, but he rallied and cheered the boys like a 
general. I went up to him and told him his son was dead. The word 
struck him like a bullet; he fell forward on his horse’s neck, and a 
great sob burst from his heart. In a few moments he straightened him- 
self in the saddle, and exclaimed, “Thank God, he died like a brave man!” 
and until the fight was over I could hear him encouraging the men. Af* 


DEATH OF PERSONS OF PROMINENCE. MEMORIAL DAY 123 


ter the battle, I assisted him to prepare the body of his son for burial, 
and together we laid the brave youth in his grave, not far from the spot 
where he fell. — Gen. M. M. Trumbull. 


Lives of Great Men Oft Remind Us.” (252). 


It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining 
before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to 
that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that 
we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; 
and this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom and that 
the government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall 
not perish from the earth. — Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg, 






124 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


ILLUSTRATIVE VERSES. 


A Crowned Life (253). 

Nobly thy course is run — 

Splendor is round it: 

Bravely thy fight is won — 

Victory crowned it. 

In thy warfare of heav’n, 

Grown old and hoary, 

Thou’rt like the summer's sun, 

Shrouded in glory. 

A Strong Man (254). 

"O God, for a man with a heart, head, hand, 

Like one of the simple great ones, 

Gone forever and forever by — 

One still strong man in a blatant land." 

The Swan Song of a Great Soul (255). 

The following verses were written by that man of profound schol- 
arship and deep piety, Professor Noah K. Davis, of the University of 
Virginia, as he was nearing his eightieth birthday. They were read at 
his recent funeral: 

“Nearly Eighty.” 

A call for me It is not far, 

Across the sea; The evening star 

Come home! thy work is done; Marks where that land begins. 

The sky is clear, Whose every height 

But night draws near. In endless light 

Embark at set of sun. With hallelujah rings. 


Into the night 
With spirit flight 
Leaving my cares behind 
Hoping for day, 
I’ll waft away 
The other shores to find. 


My home is there. 

His love to share 
Who gave Himself for me. 

I hear the word, 

I come, dear Lord, 

’Tis heaven to be with thee. 

— Baltimore Christian Advocate. 


Reward (256). 

“Servant of God, well done, 

Thy glorious warfare passed; 

The battle fought, the victory won. 
And thou art crowned at last.” 


Tennyson (257). 

No moaning of the bar; sail forth, strong ship, 

Into that gloom which has God’s face for a far light. 

Not a dirge, but a proud farewell irom each fond lip. 

And praise, abounding praise, and fame’s faint star light. 


DEATH Or' PERSONS OF PROMINENCE. MEMORIAL DAY 126 

Lamping thy tuneful soul to that large noon 
Where thou shalt choir with angels. Words of woe 
Are for the unfulfilled, not thee, whose moon 
Of genius sinks full-orbed, glorious, aglow. 

No moaning of the bar; musical drifting 

Of Time’s waves, turning to the eternal sea, 

Death’s soft wind all thy gallant canvas lifting. 

And Christ thy Pilot to the peace to be. 

— Sir Edwin Arnold, on The Death of Tennyson. 


Waiting for the Bugle (258). 

We wait for the bugle; the night dews are cold. 

The limbs of the soldiers feel jaded and old, 

The field of our bivouac is windy and bare, 

There is lead in our joints, there is frost in our hair. 
The future is veiled and its fortunes unknown, 

As we lie with hushed breath till the bugle is blown. 

At the sound of that bugle each comrade shall spring 
Like an arrow released from the strain of the string; 
The courage, the impulse of youth shall come back 
To banish the chill of the drear bivouac. 

And sorrows and losses and cares fade away 
When the life-giving signal proclaims the new day. 

Though the bivouac of age may put ice in our veins, 

And no fibre of steel in our sinews remain; 

Though the comrades of yesterday’s march are not here. 
And the sunlight seems pale and the branches are sere; 
Though the sound of our cheering dies down to a moan; 
We shall find our lost youth when the bugle is blown. 

— Thomas Wentworth Higginson. 


Memorial Day (259). 


In memory of our soldier dead — 
The strong, the brave, and 
true — 

O skies of May, shine tenderly, 
And wear your robes of blue! 
O breezes, softly, gently waft 
The fragrance of our flowers 
Upon the air while thus we deck 
These honored graves of ours, 


How bravely marched our heroes 
forth 

To battle and to strife! 

How nobly, for “our country’s 
sake,” 

Was offered each brave life! 
True men! true hearts! true com 
rades all! 

Just side by side went they, 
Beneath their country’s flag to 
win — 

Or perish in the fray. 


126 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


Their battle cry was — “Freedom,” 
and 

f Their motto — “for the right!” 

And God looked down upon them 
there, 

“All loyal in His sight” — 

And saw that they were weary, 
and 

Had done their duty well. 

And we know He crowned with 
laurels 

His soldier-boys who fell 


Upon the field of duty and 
He called them home to rest 
In sweetest peace eternal, on 
His tender loving breast. 

And here we lay our offerings 
sweet, 

Above each quiet head. 

And thus we honor loyally 

Our loyal soldier dead. 

— Mary D. Brine. 


Our Deathless Dead (260). 

No name of mortal is secure in stone: 

Hewn on the Parthenon, the name will waste; 
Carved on the Pyramid, ’twill he effaced; 

In the heroic deed, and there alone, 

Is man’s one hold against the craft of Time, 
That humbles into dust the shaft sublime — 

That mixes sculptured Karnak with the sands; 
Unannaled, blown about the Libyan lands. 

And, for the high, heroic deeds of men, 

There is no crown of praise but deed again. 

Only the heart-quick praise, the praise of deed 
Is faithful praise for the heroic breed. 


How shall we honor them — our Deathless Dead? — 
How keep their mighty memories alive? 

In Him who feels their passion, they survive! 
Flatter their souls with deed, and all is said! 

In the heroic soul their souls create 
Is raised remembrance past the reach of fate. 

The will to serve and bear. 

The will to love and dare, 

And take, for God, unprofitable risk — 

These things, these things will utter praise and pean 
Louder than lyric thunders Aeschylean; 

These things will build our dead unwasting obelisk. 

— Edwin Markham. 

Victory (261). 

Once they were mourners here below. 

And poured out cries and tears. 

They wrestled long as we do now 
With sins and doubts and fears. 

We asked them whence their victory came, 

They with united breath 
Ascribe their conquest to the Lamb. 


DEATH OF PERSONS OF PROMINENCE. MEMORIAL DAY 


Suspiria (262). 

Take them, O Death; and bear away 
Whatever thou canst call thine own! 

Thine image, stamped upon this clay, 

Doth give thee that, but that alone! 

Take them, O Grave! and let them lie 
Folded upon thy narrow shelves. 

As garments by the soul laid by. 

And precious only to ourselves! 

Take them, O great Eternity! 

Our little life is but a gust. 

That bends the branches of thy tree. 

And trails its blossoms in the dust. 

— Longfellow. 

Thro’ Sorrow — Joy (263). 

Oh saddest sweet bond! and can it be 
That through His sorrow joy is come to me. 

That thus His glorious beauty I shall see? 

Oh eyes; for whom such vision is in store. 

Keep ye to all things pure forevermore, 

Till ye shall close beside death’s shadowed door; 

Be lighted from within by unseen guest, 

Send out warm rays of love to all distressed, 

And by your shining lure them into rest! 

Pass On (264). 

O, call him not back to earth’s weariness now, 

For glories immortal encircle his brow. 

From glory to glory, forever ascending, 

His soul with the soul of the Infinite blending. 

Great, luminous truths on his pathway shall shine * * ♦ 
To nobler heights, pass on, pass on. 

Strength (265). 

“One blast upon his bugle horn 
Was worth a thousand men.” 

Lost Awhile (266). 

And in the morn those angel faces smile, 

Which I have loved long since, 

And lost awhile.” 


128 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


Soldiers Immortal (267). 

They sleep beneath the daisied sod, 

And over them we strew 
White lilies with their hearts of gold 
And roses bright with dew. 

They sleep beside their rusty swords, 

The blue coats and the gray, 

Till Gabriel blows the reveille 
Upon the Judgment Day. 

They live within the nation’s heart, 

Each gallant soldier-son 
Who fought with Lee the losing fight 
Or marched with Grant and won. 

They live in every silver star 
That glitters in the flag, 

From old Nantucket’s light to cold 
Alaska’s farthest crag. 

For, lo! the dust of Dixie’s dead 
And stern New England’s slain 
Have filled the cracks in Freedom’s wall 
And made it sound again; 

And every drop of blood they shed 
Before the cannon’s mouth 
Cements the ties of brotherhood 
Uniting North and South. 

— Minna Irving, in Leslie’s. 

Post Mortem Recognition (288). 

During our Civil War, Punch, London’s comic paper, held Lincoln 
up to ridicule for the English people could not imagine that a man 
of so humble an origin and so limited an education could be a great 
statesman, and one of earth’s truest noblemen. But the English people 
gradually learned to know him as he was, and when word of his assas- 
sination came, there appeared a cartoon in Punch that astonished the 
world; it was entitled “Brittanica sympathizes with Columbia,” and 
represented Great Britain laying a wreath on the dead President’s bier. 
The beautiful tribute from Tom Taylor, whose pen had so often held 
Lincoln up to ridicule, began with these pathetic words: — 

You lay a wreath on murdered Lincoln’s bier! 

You, who with mocking pencil wont to trace. 

Broad for the self-complacent British sneer. 

His length of shambling limb, his furrowed face, 

His gaunt, gnarled hands, his unkempt, bristling hair. 

His garb uncouth, his bearing ill at ease, 

His lack of all we prize as deboniar. 

Of power or will to shine, of art to please; 


DEATH OF PERSONS OF PROMINENCE. MEMORIAL DAY 129 


You, whose smart pen hacked up the pencil’s laugh. 
Judging each step, as though the way were plain; 
Reckless, so it could point its paragraph, 

Of chief perplexity, or people’s pain! 

Beside this corpse, that hears for winding-sheet 
The stars and stripes he lived to rear anew. 
Between the mourners at his head and feet, 

Say, scurrile jester, is there room for you? 


Yes; he had liv’d to shame me from my sneer, 
To lame my pencil, and confute my pen, 

To make me own this hind of princes peer, 
This rail-splitter a true-born kipg of men. 


y 


A Nation’s Strength (269). 


What builds the nation’s pillars 
high 

And its foundations' strong? 
What makes it mighty to defy 
The foes that round it throng? 


And is it pride? Ah! that bright 
crown 

Has seemed to nations sweet; 
But God has struck its luster down 
In ashes at his feet. 


It is not gold. Its kingdoms 
grand 

Go down in battle’s shock; 

Its shafts are laid on sinking sand, 
Not on abiding rock. 

Is it the sword? Ask the red dust 
Of empires passed away; 

.The blood has turned their stones 
to rust. 

Their glory to decay. 


Not gold, but only men can make 
A people great and strong; 

Men who, for truth and honor’s 
sake, 

Stand fast and suffer long. 

Brave men who "work while others 
sleep, 

Who dare while others fly — 
They build a nation’s pillars deep 
And lift them to the sky. 

— Ralph Waldo Emerson. 


Sometime (270). 


Some time, when all life’s lessons have been learned 
And suns and stars forevermore have set, 

The things which our weak judgments here have spurned — 
The things o’er which we grieved with lashes wet — 

Will flash before us, and life’s dark night, 
i As stars shine most in deeper tints of blue, 

And we shall see how all God’s plans were right, 

And what most seemed reproof was love most true. 


And we shall see how, while we frown and sigh, 
God’s plans go on, as best for you and me; 
How, when we called, He heeded not our cry. 
Because His wisdom to the end could see; 


130 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


And e’en as prudent parents disallowed 
Too much of sweet to craving babyhood, 

So God, perhaps, is keeping from us now 
Life’s sweetest things, because it seemeth good. 

And if, sometimes, commingled with life’s wine. 
We find the wormwood, and rebel and shrink, 

Be sure a wiser hand than yours or mine 
Pours out this potion for our lips to drink; 

And if some friend we love is lying low, 

Where human kisses cannot reach his face. 

Oh, do not blame the loving Father so, 

But wear your sorrow with obedient grace. 

And you shall shortly know that lengthened breath 
Is not the sweetest gift God sends His friend, 
And that sometimes the sable pall of death 
Conceals the fairest boon His love can send. 

If we push ajar the gates of life 
And stand within, and all God’s working see, 

We could interpret all this doubt and strife, 

And for each mystery could find a key. 

But not today. Then be content, poor heart; 

God’s plans, like lilies, pure and white unfold; 
We must not tear the close-shut leaves apart — 
Time will reveal the calyxes of gold; 

And if, through patient toil, we reach the land 
Where tired feet with sandals loosed may rest. 
Where we shall clearly know and understand, 

I think that we will say, “God knew % the best.’’ 


God Knows Best (271). 

We shall work for an age at a sitting, 

And never grow tired at all, 

And no one shall work for money, 

And no one shall work for fame, 

But each for the joy of the working. 

And each in his separate star, 

Shall paint the things as he sees them, 

For the God of things as they are.” 

“And when at last, through patient toil, we reach that land, 
Where weary souls with sandals loosed may rest, 

Where we shall fully know and understand, 

I think that we shall say, “Well, God knew best.” 

—Kipling. 


DEATH OF PERSONS OF PROMINENCE. MEMORIAL DAY 131 


Love (272). 

Yea, God is love, and love is might, 

Mighty as surely to keep as to make; 

And the sleepers, sleeping in death’s dark night, 
In the resurrection of life shall wake. 

— Alice Carey. 


Not Far They 

“O, so far,” one saith, “so far 
Lies that shadow-circled shore! 

Who shall tell us where they are, 
Since they come to us no more? 

Farther than the arrow flies, 
Upward sped from swiftest 
string; 

Farther than the cloud wreaths 
rise 

From the mountains where they 
cling; 

Nor the wing of homing bird 
Bears our greeting to that 
strand, 

Nor our grief-wrung sighs have 
stirred 

Aught of answer from that land. 

O, so far, so strange and far! 

Out beyond the tideless bar, 

Farther than the storm cloud 
lightens, 

Farther than the sunset brightens; 


Dwell (273). 

Nor the eagle’s loftiest soaring, 
Nor love’s uttermost imploring 
Scales the lowest battlement 
Of the city where they went” 

O, not far they dwell, not far! 
Near as faith and mercy are; 
Star-sown heights nor depths can 
part 

Friends who meet in Jesus’s heart. 
Ramparts of the sunrise sky, 
Bastions of infinity. 

Are but outworks of the home 
Unto which we too shall come. 
Here the gate is open wide; 

There the farthest courts of 
space 

Center on one altar side, 

Lighted by one blessed Face. 

We on earth, our own above. 
Linked in hope and life and love — 
For the city where they went 
Is the home of heart content. 

— Christian Endeavor World. 


How Did You Die? (274). 

Did you tackle the trouble that came your way. 

With a resolute heart and cheerful, 

Or hide your face from the light of day 
With a craven soul and fearful? 

Oh! trouble’s a ton, or trouble’s an ounce. 

Or a trouble is what you make it, 

And it isn’t the fact that you’re hurt that counts, 

But only how did you take it? 

You’re beaten to earth? Well, well, what’s that? 

Come up with a smiling face. 

It’s nothing against you to fall down flat, 

But to lie there, that’s disgrace. 

The harder you’re thrown, why the higher you bounce; 

Be fond of your blackened eye! 

It isn’t the fact that you’re licked that counts. 

It’s how did you fight and why. 


132 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


And though you be down to the death, what then? 

If you battled the best you could, 

If you played your part in the world of men. 

Why, the critic will call it good. 

Death comes with a crawl, or comes with a pounce, 

And whether he’s slow or spry, 

It isn’t the fact that you’re dead that counts, 

But only how did you die. 

— Edmund Vance Cook. 

He Lives (275). 

In works we do, in prayers, we pray, 

Life of our life, He lives to-day. 

—Whittier. 

Strong Men (276). 

“The East is East, and the West is West, and never the twain shall meet, 
Till the earth and sky stand presently at God’s great judgment seat.” 

So it seemed for long years, but listen 

“But there is neither East nor West, border nor breed nor birth, 

When two strong men stand face to face, tho’ they come from the ends 
of the earth.” — Kipling. 

Just Away (277). 

I cannot say, and I will not say 
That he is dead. He is just away! 

With a cheery smile and a wave of the hand 
He has wandered into an unknown land. 

Think of him faring on, as dear 
In the love There as the love of Here. 

— Riley. 

Lincoln (278). 

And so they buried Lincoln? Strange and vain. 

Has any creature thought of Lincoln hid 
In any vault ’neath any coffin lid, 

In all years since that wild spring of pain? 

’This false — he never in the grave hath lain. 

You could not bury him, although you slid 
Upon his clay, the Cheops Pyramids, 

Or heaped it with the Rocky Mountain chain. 

They slew themselves — they but set Lincoln free; 

In all earth his great heart beats as strong, 

Shall beat while pulses throb to chivalry, 

And burn with hate of tyranny and wrong. 

Whoever will may find him, anywhere 
Save in the tomb. Not there — he is not there. 

— James McKay. 


DEATH OF PERSONS OF PROMINENCE. MEMORIAL DAY 133 


A Ballad of Heroes (279). 

“Now all your victories are in vain” 
Because you passed, and now are not — 
Because in some remoter day 
Your sacred dust in doubtful spot 
Was blown of ancient airs away — 
Because you perished — must men say 
Your deeds were naught, and so profane 
Your lives with that cold burden? Nay, 
The deeds you wrought are not in vain. 

Though it may be, above the plot 
That hid your once imperial clay, 

No greener than o’er man forgot 
The unregarding grasses sway; 

Though there no sweeter is the lay 
Of careless bird; though you remain 
Without distinction of decay, 

The deeds you wrought are not in vain. 

No, for while yet in tower or cot 
Your story stirs the pulses play, 

And men forget the sordid lot — 

The sordid cares — of cities gray; 

While yet they grow for homelier fray 
More strong from you, as reading plain 
That Life may go, if Honor stay. 

The deeds you wrought are not in vain. 

Envoy. 

Heroes of old! I humbly lay 
The laurel on your graves again; 
Whatever men have done, men may — 

The deeds you wrought are not in vain. 


Memorial (280). 


“We are not many, we who stand 

Beside our comrades’ graves to- 
day, 

Yet, while we live, with reverent 
hearts 

We’ll honor those who went be- 
fore; 

While as each brother called, 
departs, 

Is re-enlisted one name more. 


We stand upon the river’s verge 
And see the Golden City shine 
Dividing River, bright and cool, 
O’er which we all must take our 
way, 

When to that Harbor Beautiful 
We all shall sail some day — some 
day. 


134 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


Peace 

Peace to the warrior band, 

To those who lie 
Nameless in graves unknown, 
While the years march by 
With the spoil of sigh. 

Tribute of tear 
To the dead who live, 

To the heroes, silent prone 
Beneath the verdant sod, the stor- 
ied stone. 

Vain, fugitive 

Record in crumbling sand 

Of deeds that cannot die. 

Peace to the thinning line. 

The remnant wan 
With the wintry rime. 

The blight, the ban 
Of sullen-tempered time. 

Braving the years of ruth, — 

Fit guerdon of the pain 
Of those who in the cause 
Of Freedom, child of truth, — 
Scorning the bootless gain 
Of earth for heaven’s applause, 
Have won the prize of everlasting 
youth, 

Lulled by war’s after-chime, — 

The crooning, peaceful prime 


( 281 ). 

Of fruitful years, — 

Forget the wounds, the fears. 

The Nation’s bitter tears, 

The din, the glare, the grime, 

Ye, the symbol and the sign 
Of the God in man! 

Peace! 

Let the war-song cease * 

Let the love-bird’s note 
From the cannon’s throat 
Proclaim the world’s release 
From the bloody scourge! 

Let the dove nest 
On the war-ship’s prow; 

And where now 
The thorn is, 

And the clutching brier, 

Let the rose unfurl her fire 
And the clematis 
Climb and aspire. 

Peace! 

Let the soul emerge; 

Let the world have rest; 

Let the sword rust in the sheath, 
And for the foeman’s brow 
Twine the olive wreath. 

— Rev. Edward J. Spencer in The 
Christian Register. 


DEATH OF PERSONS OF PROMINENCE. MEMORIAL DAY 135 

TEXTS AND TREATMENT HINTS. 

"Samuel Judged Israel All the Days of His Life.” — 1 Sam. 7:15. (282), 
Think of being able to account for all the days of a whole human 
history! Think of being able to write your biography in one sentence! 
Think of being able to do without parentheses, foot-notes, reservations, 
apologies, and self-vindications! When some of us attempt to write our 
autobiography, we have seen great blank spaces — w r e do not know what we 
did then; we have seen blurred, blotched pages, with erasures and inter-* 
lineations, and we have said, “This reminds us of the daily and terrible 
mistakes of our life.” So our book becomes an anomalous, contradictory 
irreconcilable thing. Here is a man whose whole life was consecrated 
to a God-given task. — Parker. 

"A Faithful Minister and Fellow-Servant In the Lord.” — Col. 4:7 (283), 

I. A splendid lifework. 

II. An enviable record. 

III. An undying influence. 

Dead Yet Speaketh (284). 

“Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached 
unto you, which also you have received, and wherein ye stand; by 
which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto 
you, unless ye have believed in vain. For I delivered unto you first of 
all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins accord- 
ing to the Scriptures; and that He was buried and that He arose again 
the third day according to the Scriptures.” — I Cor. 15:1-4. 

I. A messenger dead yet speaking. The message survives. 

II. We honor the messenger’s memory when we are faithful to hia 
message. 

"I Thank My God Upon Every Remembrance of You.” — Phil. 1:3. (285). 

The abiding influence of a great life; perpetuating itself in other 
lives uplifted by its touch. 

“I Have Fought a Good Fight.” — 2 Tim. 4:7. 

1. A great soldier fallen. 

2. His lifestory bears witness to his nobility. 

3. Its memory is an inspiration. 

“He Being Dead Yet Speaketh.”— Heb. 11:4 (286). 

1. A good life is a perpetual benediction. 

2. The influence exerted by it persists. 

3. What messages come back to us from the departed saint? 

"After this I beheld, and lo, a great multitude, which no man could num- 
ber, of all nations and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood be- 
fore the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and 
palms In their hands.” — Rev. 7:9 (287). 

I. The multitude. The sight of a multitude is, in its way, as attrac- 
tive as a magnet; we run to see the object which has gathered it to- 
gether, and this may very properly be done in the present instance. 


136 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


(1) The vastness of the multitude is most remarkable; (2) the variety 
of the multitude is no less remarkable than the vastness of it: “of all 
nations, and kindreds, and peoples, and tongues.” 

II. Their position. Attaching to their position there is evidently 
(1) a transcendent honor; (2) a superlative happiness. 

III. Their adornment. We notice — (1) the spotless purity of their 
adornment: “white robes;” (2) its triumphal character: “palms in their 
hands.” 

IV. Their worship. (1) The song of their worship is replete with 
interest, the subject of it is salvation, the object God Himself. (2) The 
service of their worship is full of interest; it is full of both fervor and 
harmony. — E. A. Thomson. 

As a Good Soldier of Jesus Christ.” — 2 Tim. 2:3 (288). 

The daily life of every one of us teems with occasions which will 
try the temper of our courage as searchingly, though not as terribly, as 
battlefield, or fire, or wreck; for we are born into a state of war, with 
falsehood, and disease, and wrong, and misery, in a thousand forms, 
lying all around us, and the voice within calling us to take our stand as 
men, in the eternal battle against these. And in this lifelong fight, to 
be waged by every one of us, single-handed, against a host of foes, the 
last requisite for a good fight — the last proof and test of our courage 
and manfulness must be loyalty to truth — the most rare and difficult of 
all human qualities. For such loyalty, as it grows in perfection, asks 
ever more and more of us, and sets before us a standard of manliness 
always rising higher and higher; and this great lesson we learn from 
Christ’s life, the more earnestly and faithfully we study it. — Thomas 
Hughes. 


VI. MYSTERIOUS PROVIDENCES. 
SUDDEN DEATH, ACCIDENT, DISASTER 


REFLECTIONS AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 

God’s Inscrutable Dealings (289). 

Our careful and costly preparations for doing some special work for 
the Master may turn out to have been utterly wasted. We find things to 
be quite the opposite of what we expected. Health gives out at the very 
moment of intended action; or, through unlooked-for reverses, the means 
fail just at the last for doing what we had set our hearts on accomplish- 
ing. The devoted Lowrie goes down in the Bay of Bengal with the ship 
which is nearing the land, to bless which with his missionary labors he 
had made long and expensive preparation. 

A father has planned to give the best education he can to an only 
son; but the son dies on the very threshold of his educational career. 
The father’s generous hands are stayed and held. 

A mother makes a long and tedious journey to see a sick child, tak- 
ing with her carefully-prepared gifts for her child’s relief and comfort. 
But she has no sooner come than she is told that her child is no longer 
living. What now of the gifts, of which her loving hands are full? The 
dear one, on whom she is ready to bestow them, is no longer here to 
receive them. In what strange perplexities are we thus sometimes over- 
whelmingly plunged! How inscrutable God’s dealings with us and ours! 
But not always, and not for long, does the Father mean that His children 
shall be kept in harrowing suspense, nor long be balked in the express 
sion of their love. Men, in shining garments, appear to the baffled and 
wondering disciples with words of explanation, of promise and of larger 
hope. — Ballard. 


Unexpected Sorrow (290-A). 

The utter unexpectedness of many life-sorrows is one of their strang- 
est characteristics. They come like a thunder-burst out of a clear sky. 
not only without any premonition of their coming, but without any appar- 
ent reason for it; and the crushed heart asks, either angrily or despairing- 
ly, why it has been sent. Many another sufferer besides Job has turned 
the face to heaven in amazed perplexity, and prayed “Show me where- 
fore Thou contendest with me;” and when no answer to that cry hag 
come, has either looked upon the whole thing as an insoluble mystery, 
or coldly and half-rebelliously resigned himself to the worship of an- 
other god altogether whom he calls “inevitable fate.” But surely we are 
often entirely wrong in talking of the “mysteriousness” of God’s dealings 
with us. We may not know all His reasons for them, but some of His 
reasons are plain enough. In multitudes of cases they are plainly His 
sharp but merciful way of summoning a reckless, self-centered, self- 


ICS 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


indulgent, worldly heart to stop and think. They are meant to shake 
it out of its foolish security, and out of that love of the world which is 
so ruinous to our best and highest life. — Rev. G. H. Knight. 

Be Still (290-B). 

To be on our guard against either hasty utterance or act in time of 
sudden distress or danger; to remember that, bad as things are, they 
may not be nearly as bad as they seem; to bear in mind that the “un- 
known, being always the region of terror,” discouragements took more 
discouraging when seen through discouraged eyes; that things may be 
just ready to brighten when they look the darkest; never to forget the 
wrong of resorting to any rash, desperate, dishonest, doubtful or self- 
harming expedient for obtaining relief; to know that “God will not have 
us break into His councilhouse or spy out His hidden mysteries,” but 
that we must wait His time with watching and prayer — such are the 
lessons we need to learn. — Ballard. 

God's Secrets (290-C). 

There are secrets hidden in every tiny flower and grain of sand, in 
every throbbing nerve and aching heart, which our keenest wisdom 
cannot discover. Every tear is a profound mystery, every sigh is a 
world of unimaginable things. No one can tell us why we laugh or why 
we cry. No one can read his brother’s mind or understand his own. He 
who has studied human nature most closely has but touched the surface 
of it. Those who can tell us most about man can only prove that he is 
fearfully and wonderfully made. Men who have been investigating for 
a lifetime the sins, sorrows, and diseases of the world, find that these 
are still the everlasting riddle; and he whose faith has given him the 
clearest vision of God, knows that these are but “a portion of His ways, 
and the thunders of His power none can understand.” The highest phil- 
osophy still prattles and stammers and guesses like a child, and we all 
have to kneel down humbly declaring that our wisdom is but dim-eyed 
folly. — Greenbough. 


God’s Justice (290-D). 

God is Love, but He is also the Absolutely Righteous One, and we 
may be certain that upon any of His doings, however terrible they may 
be, not the least shadow of injustice will be allowed to rest. By Him 
as Judge, not only some but all the circumstances of each case will be 
tenderly taken into account. All possible mitigations of blame will be 
mercifully considered. The force of evil upbringing and evil environ- 
ment, the power of inherited -predisposition to sin, the subtlety of temp- 
tation, the ineffectual resistances of the heart to sin that enslaved it 
notwithstanding, all these will be impartially allowed for. Even the 
faintest signs of real repentance at the very last, signs distinguishable 
only by Him, will receive their full value at His hands, and His verdict 
will be “according to truth,” so absolutely and so transparently just 
when revealed to all, that it will command the assent of every con- 
science that hears it. The reply of every heart will then be like the 


MYSTERIOUS PROVIDENCES. SUDDEN DEATH 


139 


“great voice of much people in heaven saying Alleluia! glory and hon- 
our and power to the Lord our God, for true and righteous are His 
judgments.” — Selected. 

When the Mists Have Rolled Away (290-E). 

But better than all those things, whatever those things may be, is 
this brief but comprehensive assurance, that we shall know as we are 
known — face to face, and not through a thick, discolored looking-glass. 
We shall know God, whom we have so often mistrusted, and with the 
perfect image of His beauty we shall be forever satisfied. We shall 
know our own poor hearts, of which we have been so ignorant, and un- 
derstand the full meaning of our life’s strange story. And we shall know 
each other. There is a sort of rapture in that thought; we never have 
known each other, no not even our dearest. We have always been 
reading each other wrongly in the dark; and even in praying together, 
and when our lips met, we have misjudged each other; and all that will 
pass away when the true light shines, and we shall understand what the 
perfect love means which has no torment of suspicion or fear. — Knight. 

Trusting In the Dark (291-A). 

To a man bereft at a stroke of property, children, and health, a 
foolish woman once said, tauntingly, “What of your God now? Curse 
him and then die and be done with it.” The man did better. He gave 
to the world, instead, a world-old and much-needed lesson on the happi- 
ness of enduring. By reason of it all the generations since have heard 
of and seen two things which it would have been an unspeakable loss 
to have missed — “The patience of Job and the end of the Lord.” — 
Selected. 


The Inexplicable (291-B). 

There are many things we cannot explain, for life reaches out into 
the infinite. We know but little and feel ourselves limited on every side, 
but, believing in God, we bow to His will in the assurance that in some 
way suffering is not only compatible with his sovereignty, but in the 
end works for good. Moral responsibility involves freedom of choice, 
and, therefore, the possibility of suffering and misery. With the revela- 
tion of God to us there comes also the knowledge of his righteous ad- 
ministration, and the consequent penalty for transgression. — Selected. 

Lesser Calamities Averting Greater Ones (291-C). 

God knows that for men themselves no other calamity is comparable 
to the calamity of forgetting God. Earthquake and fire and flood seem 
costly ministers, but in reality they are cheap, infinitely cheap, if only 
they bring back God to his place of sovereignty in the hearts of men. 

Life's Mystery (291-D). 

Pain in some form and in some measure is universal. We live in a 
world of beauty, but there is sadness in it. There are tender relations; 
there is love; there is hope; there is the possession of wonderful powers, 
but there is sorrow. From childhood to age there are tears; sighs and 
groans are mingled with the strains of music. There is life, but it ends 


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in death. We cannot escape from this condition. We are capable of the 
highest happiness. We instinctively seek it and ever work for it, but 
the pain and the sadness continue. 

All this becomes a greater mystery when we recognize God as the 
Creator and Lord of life. Without the belief of God there would be 
absolute darkness as to the future; we would be intelligent beings with 
possibilities of the greatest good floating helplessly in a current rushing 
into an unknown canon of darkness. But even with the belief of God, 
we often ask, Why? and cannot answer. How can we reconcile suffer- 
ing with the infinite love and almighty power of God? 

The question often presses upon the heart of faith. The heart goes 
out to God; it also cries to Him from the depths, “Has the Lord for- 
gotten to be gracious? Is His mercy gone forever?” Faith may say, 
“Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him,” but the mystery is still about 
and upon us. — United Presbyterian. 

Man's Insufficiency and Dependency Upon God (291-E). 

A calamity like that at San Francisco could have been averted. 
God might easily have done this. It was simply the jar of a slowly set- 
tling geological “fault,” re-enforced probably by a light volcanic tremor. 
Divine power could have intervened to prevent both these. We ask 
God to protect our lives, and we are grateful when He does it. The re- 
quest is a rational one, and is doubtless often granted. But men are 
prone to grow careless. They forget God. San Francisco was a child 
of plenty. Nowhere on earth are mere physical blessings so abundant 
as in California. Do we not all know how much danger of hardness of 
heart there is in this? Which city to-day has a keener consciousness of 
man’s insufficiency, of his dependence upon God, San Francisco or Na- 
ples? Naples has just been preserved from destruction. In a year she 
will forget it. How long will it take to efface the impressions of April 
18 from the mind of California? 

Not all men are profited by such experiences, it is true. Some are 
but confirmed in their skepticism. Yet these are a minority. The heart 
of man turns to God in the hour of doom. It has ever done so; it ever 
will. Loving parents on earth chide and punish their children. It is a 
grievous thing, but it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness. It 
always has done so; it always will. — Northwestern Christian Advocate. 

Heaven's Light on Earth’s Clouds (2S2-A). 

There are many things in nature and so many in our own experi- 
ences that we can not understand; they look hard; they are often bitter 
to us; and we should doubt whether God loves us at all, whether He has 
not left us standing amid the grinding of the vast forces, utterly helpless, 
if God had not in so many ways assured us that He does love us. We 
must turn from experience and turn from nature to the Word of God 
and to that larger experience of the nations that serve God, to be assured 
of this. But the testimony of the Word of God and the testimony of 
human history, as men have obeyed that Word, makes it certain 
that God loves us with a great love, despite the devastations of nature 
and despite the shocks of calamity that come to us in our individual 


MYSTERIOUS PROVIDENCES. SUDDEN DEATH 


141 


lives. Yet there shall come a time when we shall not need to argue tho 
question — we shall see. We shall yet stand in the revealing light of a 
better world. That light will not only reveal what is then about us, it 
will also stream back upon our past, and illumine every dark spot along 
the pathway over which we have come. There have been very many of 
them, these dark places. But the light of eternity shall stream on to 
them, and we shall see. — Selected. 

Human Responsibility for Disaster (292-B). 

It is very evident, from the facts as disclosed to the public, that the 
disaster to the steamer “Oregon,” was not by the “act of God,” in the 
sense of not being preventable by man. The weather was pleasant, the 
sea calm, and the night clear, and there was the most ample sea 
room for both the schooner and the steamer without any collision. There 
was no necessity for this collision, other than that which resulted from 
the failure of somebody seasonably to do his duty. Whether the officers 
of the steamer or those of the schooner are to blame, or both are to 
blame, certain it is that the disaster is the result of negligence, and 
might and would have been prevented by proper attention and watch- 
fulness. 

Here, then, is a moral lesson, very wide and varied in its applica- 
tion to the events of this life, which we choose in a few words to 
emphasize. The essential idea of negligence is the omission to act when 
and where we should act. The providence of God is so conducted in 
this world that such omission is often as serious as the most positive 
form of action. This is taught by experience in the stern and some- 
times awful penalties that follow the omission. Human life is full of 
illustrations to this effect. The destruction of health and even untimely 
death of many a man are the natural consequences, not so much of what 
he actually does, as of what he omits to do. Disasters in business life 
are often due to a want of seasonable attention. — The Independent. 

A Challenge to Sympathy (292-C). 

When any great disaster occurs the charity of our people is poured 
out upon it from the length and breadth of the land, with a superb gen- 
erosity which ennobles all humanity. This impulse to give, to hold out a 
helping hand to the fallen is common to almost all the people of the 
American race. We ought to thank God for such a trait of national 
character, and for the Christianity which has taught it to us, here, where 
man has first had a chance to learn and practice pure Christianity unfet- 
tered by sectarian power. — Rebecca Harding Davis. 

Human Sympathy (292-D). 

Perhaps the most immediate effect of the San Francisco disaster is 
the shock it has given to men’s religious convictions. Good Christian 
people are asking the most startling questions. The event indeed seems 
to have no ascertainable connection with orthodoxy. Nature has here 
been acting with a savagery more brutal than that of the greatest sav- 
age we know. The Hottentot, the Australian bushman, has a heart and 
conscience of some sort, but people see no heart or conscience in this 


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THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


wreckage. Could tliere be any approximation to feeling, to love as we 
know it, in a Power which murdered and destroyed in such fashion? 
Moreover, could men continue to regard themselves as of any serious 
account in a universe which treated them thus; which paid seemingly 
as much attention to their tears and prayers as to the buzz of summer 
flies? In those hours of horror man rushed everywhere to help his 
brother, but there seemed no help outside man. 

The sky which noticed all makes no disclosure. 

And the earth keeps up her terrible composure. 

This apparent cosmic indifference to human welfare is the feature 
of life which, perhaps, more than any other, has impressed itself on the 
modern consciousness. “There is no justice in the outside universe,” 
says a modern writer; “justice exists only in the soul” A German poet 
of to-day echoes the sentiment: 

Das ganze Weltall zeigt nur Leid und Pein; 

Jedoch das Mitleid fuhlt der Mensch allein! 

“The whole world shows but sorrow and pain, but compassion is felt 
by man alone.” — J. Brierly. 

Carelessness and Its Consequences (292-E). 

The Johnstown horror is so appalling that it has for the moment 
blotted out all thoughts about it from the mind of the public, beyond 
pity and eager charity. But there are one or two ideas suggested by it 
of which we should take cognizance while yet the cloud of death is 
black over us. Who and what is to blame for this vast destruction of 
property and the lost, uncounted human lives? What but, as usual, the 
easy, careless good-humor for which the native American is now con- 
spicuous among all other men? 

A railway train is burned from an overturned stove, and a hundred 
men and women are literally roasted to death. A feeble effort is made 
in one or two states to compel railway companies to heat their cars 
without stoves; but the companies neglect the law and the great, good- 
humored public take it for granted all is right, and seat themselves in 
the stove-heated cars, to be appalled and indignant again when the hor- 
ror is repeated. 

A mill is burned or a theater, with a similar holocaust of human 
beings. There is a momentary spasm of popular rage in which managers 
and manufacturers are threatened with dire punishment if they fail to 
provide suitable escape from their buildings. But in six months the 
danger, the law and the penalty are all forgotten by the jolly, easy-going 
American, who takes it for granted all is right. — The Independent. 

The Key to the Mystery of Pain and Death (293-A). 

The New Testament speaks of God as, in Christ, “emptying Himself, 
taking on Him the form of a servant.” It teaches a limitation of the di- 
vine, that it may draw near to, and ally itself with humanity. But the 


MYSTERIOUS PROVIDENCES. SUDDEN DEATH 


143 


considerations we have been enumerating raise the question whether 
such a self-emptying, such a limitation, have not been carried farther; 
whether creation itself, the bringing into existence of beings like our- 
selves, dowered with intelligence and free will, is not itself a limitation; 
whether the Infinite One, in fathering such a world and in guiding it, 
is not Himself under a Kenosis; whether we have not here, in nature 
and history, to do immediately with a self-limited power and knowledge; 
a power and knowledge that work as we do by experiment and effort; 
by partial successes, by mistakes and failures even; working against an 
outer indifference and even opposition on the way to a final and vic- 
torious good? May it not be that there was no other way than this — 
of humiliation and self-abnegation — of bringing such as we are to the 
best that is possible for us; that only in His union with us in failure 
and disaster lay the road to the perfectibility of our spirits, to our final 
bliss in oneness with Himself? May it not be that here, by this way of 
silence and philosophy, we are coming to a greater doctrine of the 
Cross, as borne by our God from the beginning of His relations with us; 
the doctrine of the “Lamb, slain from the foundation of the world;” that 
we have here the key to the mystery of the ages, the mystery of pain 
and sin, and mistake and death; have it in the doctrine of One who has 
stooped from his height to share our imperfection, to travel with us till 
the end is reached and the limitation is over; till the Kingdom is finally 
delivered up to the Father, and God is all in All? — Jonathan Brierly. 

Object of Disasters (293-B). 

Some one has said that if all the stars ceased shining, and then 
after a hundred years shone out again, there is not an eye but would 
be lifted heavenward, and not a lip but would break forth in praise. 
But the stars were shining when we were little children, and they are 
there tonight, and will be there tomorrow, and we are so accustomed 
to that glory that we rarely give to it a single thought. What eyes we 
have when we travel on the Continent! Every river and hill and castle 
we observe. But in Glasgow, and by the banks of Clyde, a district rich in 
story and in beauty, there we are so accustomed to the scenery that we 
have eyes for nothing but the newspaper. “One good custom doth cor- 
rupt the world,” and it does so, because it lulls to sleep. It is a bad 
thing to grow accustomed to the wrong. It may be worse to grow ac- 
customed to the right. And that is why in the history of the church 
God sends the earthquake and the crash of storm, that men may be 
roused and startled to concern, and escape the fatal sway of inattention. 
— G. H. Morrison, D. D. 

God Is Never Worsted (293-C). 

It has been thought that God’s work is His defeat. Final disaster, 
some have taught, and even yet teach, means that God’s plans have 
failed. Not so. God is no experimenter. He knew the end from the 
beginning. He is never worsted. Man experiments and often fails. Man 
is often disappointed, but he need not be eternally beaten. History is 
proof that though revolutions come and go, they leave a deposit of good 


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THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


for the race. As one has put it, “the revolution of ’76 was but an evo- 
lution, a new nation was the result.” The Civil War, instead of destroy- 
ing this republic, only cemented it more securely together. Though six 
centuries came and went in the building of the cathedral of Cologne it 
stands now as “a poem in stone.” The end of things is not annihilation, 
the death of all things is not irreparable loss. Destruction is unto con- 
struction. There is to be a new heaven and a new earth. Old things 
pass away that a new order of things may be. — Selected. 

Sin’s Suffering and Cure (293-D). 

It was a glorious summer afternoon. Outside the trees were bathed 
in sunshine and the birds were filled with song. 

Inside, the scene was the surgical ward of a London hospital. Four 
times in succession, strong yet marvelously tender hands had wheeled 
a timid, shrinking woman, or perchance a young girl to the vestibule 
of the dreaded operating theatre and the touch of the surgeon’s knife. 
Dreaded, yet neither seen nor felt. Four times in succession, uncon- 
scious under the merciful anaesthetic, had a still, death-like figure been 
returned to her bed. 

To one eye, unaccustomed to such scenes, and the strange combina- 
tion of sunshine and pain, of song and apparent death, a vision seemed 
to rise which filled the mind with thought. That was one ward out of 
several in the same hospital. One hospital out of the many in London 
alone. Before imagination arose all the hospitals in England, in Brit- 
ain, in America, in New Zealand and all the hospitals in heathen lands. 

The hospitals of the world! Alas! this was not all. There came a 
vision of the millions of sick and suffering folk in Western lands, and 
the teeming millions of sufferers of all ages in India and China an3 
Africa, who ought to be in hospital and who are not medically relieved. 
Then, in a flash, which seemed to fill with heat which could be felt, 
came the thought, “Through one man sin entered into the world and 
death through sin.” The thought was overwhelming, but outside there 
were still the sunshine and the song. “For if by the trespass of the one 
the many died, much more did the grace of God, and the gift by the grace 
of the one man, Jesus Christ, abound unto the many.” “God so loved the 
world that He gave His only begotten Son.” There is always the sun- 
shine of His love; the glory of the natural world; and the song of the 
redeemed who have been brought to Him through suffering, perchance 
by way of the surgeon’s knife. — The Christian (London). 

The Clay and the Potter (293-E). 

The Bible knows nothing of self-made men. Even where St. Paul 
hints that every one must work out his own salvation, one feels that it 
is a lapse on his part, or that he meant something a little different from 
what the words convey. For the great and insistent teaching of St. 
Paul is that we become real men through an impartation from God. A 
great American preacher used often to use the phrase “character through 
inspiration.” This is the Bible view. The favorite imagery of the Old 
Testament is that of the potter molding clay. We are in God’s hands. 


MYSTERIOUS PROVIDENCES. SUDDEN DEATH 


145 


He fashions us as He wills. Man's work is to fall in with and assist 
God’s work. Thus God fashioned the great men of Israel. Thus he made 
even the nation. The Old Testament attributes every incident in Israel’s 
making directly to God. This is not hard doctrine. The first thing any 
man realizes is that he is in the hands of a greater power than himself, 
whether that power be a good God or an evil fate or simply a blind 
mechanism. Here is the greatness of faith. For since some power has 
us in its hands, how much better that it should be a loving and intelli- 
gent Potter who will mold us into a fine vessel than a heartless mechan- 
ism that will only wreck us in the end. But we are made, we do not make 
ourselves. — Lynch. 


The Messina Earthquake (294-A). 

Perhaps the most remarkable, and the most pitiful of the ruins, 
are those of the Duomo or Cathedral, which has stood so many centur- 
ies, now to be overthrown. The monster monoliths of granite, with gilded 
capitals, which once were the columns of Neptune’s Temple at Faro, 
lie half or wholly covered by the painted woodwork and debris of the 
roof, among which are fragments of marble tombs and inlaid altars, 
golden figures of angels and sculptured saints — a mountain of ruined 
masonry many feet high and open to the sky. The beautifully carved 
pulpit has been hurled to the ground, together with the pillar which 
supported it, with the mosaic and frescoes, with the arches and cornices, 
which made the Duomo so rich a treasure house of art. 

One thing alone remains of the ancient glory — the colossal figure 
of Christ in mosaic in the dome of the apse at the east end. It is still 
there, with serene countenance and hand uplifted in the act of blessing, 
as for five hundred years or more it has remained, gazing benignly on 
the passing generations of worshippers. The calmness of that majestic, 
lifelike figure was startling. I turned from it resentfully. ‘How can a 
blessing rest on such awful destruction as this?’ I exclaimed involuntari- 
ly. Then it was suggested that that benediction might reach beyond the 
church, beyond the fallen walls of the ruined city, a message of peace 
and consolation in their hour of need to souls in sore anguish of mind 
and body; and I was glad that the apse had not been destroyed. — The 
Nineteenth Century. 

The Titanic Disaster (294-B). 

Even the most superficial and careless can hardly escape giving 
thought to the sober reflections awakened by the foundering of the mam- 
moth liner with its precious human freight. How utterly at the mercy 
of forces outside ourselves we are in spite of all the safeguards of 
science and skill! 

How little the things which we often value so extravagantly count 
for in the great crisis times of life. The multi-millionaire and the steer- 
age passenger are on a level. 

What folly it is for a man to regulate his life and leave the spiritual 
factor out of the reckoning. How utterly bereavement and sorrow ob- 
literate the artificial social distinctions which wealth and station and 
culture are so ready to make at ordinary times. 


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THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


It would be easy to multiply these reflections indefinitely. And such 
an awful disaster as this one is calculated to lead all to do so. A float- 
ing mass of ice rams a floating palace, and in a few hours a multitude of 
souls pass out from time into eternity, leaving behind them their wealth 
and honors and plans, and standing spiritually stripped before the ever- 
lasting realities of the life beyond. 

And what is wrought here in a more spectacular way, is duplicated 
every day, as, in the ordinary course of nature, thousands of men go out 
from this life into the life to come. 

After all, one thing alone counts. For the man who lives with 
Christ here, when and how death ushers him into Christ’s heavenly 
presence matters little. Christlikeness means readiness and readiness 
means everlasting joy and rest. 

“Mysterious Providences” (294-C). 

Fifty years ago a great many moralizers would have described the 
terrible Titanic disaster as “an inscrutable providence” and let it go at 
that. We know better today, not because we are less reverent, but 
because we are less ignorant of the law of cause and effect. 

Fighting shy of any metaphysical entanglement in the interminable 
divine-foreknowledge-and-human-free-will argument one fact stands out 
as clearly as the stars stood out over the glassy sea on that fateful 
Sunday night of April the fourteenth and that is that sixteen hundred 
and fifty-two — possibly more — helpless souls went down to death be- 
cause someone had blundered. And it was not blind blundering either; 
but reckless and deliberate neglect of the most ordinary common-sense 
precautions which even stupidity could have suggested. 

If the Titanic’s officers — and they were brave, true men too — 
knowing, because warned, that icebergs were in their vicinity, had 
slowed down their speed from twenty-seven to eight or ten miles for 
a few hours until the danger zone was passed, there would have been 
no wreck. 

And if there had been ample life-saving equipment — instead of 
only one-fifth enough boats and rafts — even if the collision had occurred, 
most of the sixteen hundred would have been saved. 

There was no mysterious providence about the matter, but rank 
human carelessness, greed, ambition to make a record — and no doubt 
the owners and not the officers were responsible for the resultant 
taking of desperate chances and insufficient equipment. 

“Desert Journeys” (294-D). 

In one of these modern books of the desert there is given a bit 
of dialogue between a man and a woman: 

“ ‘The desert is full of truth. Is that what you mean to ask?’ the 
man says. 

“The woman made no reply. 

“The man stretched out his hand to the shining expanse of desert 
before them. 


MYSTERIOUS PROVIDENCES. SUDDEN DEATH 


147 


“ ‘The man who is afraid of prayer is unwise to set foot beyond 
the palm trees,’ he said. 

“‘Why unwise?’ she asks. 

“He answers, ‘The Arabs have a saying, “The desert is a garden 
of Allah.””’ 


Life Meant to Be Heroic (294-E). 

Life is meant to be a heroic thing. God’s best gift to His greatest 
servants and sons has not been immunity from suffering, the surprise 
of woe, the black face of death, but equanimity, heroism, uttermost 
trust. Paul’s wages for his immeasurable service in his Master’s 
kingdom was of two kinds. He was beheaded as a criminal outside 
the walls of Rome; he met this order of outrage and death in the 
calm might of an inspired life and a glorious hope. 

Calamity is not new, nor has it come to an end with the latest 
disaster. Faith is equally needed in the brightness of day and the 
blackness of night; faith is our life because mere temporal existence 
is in jeopardy every hour. We must not count too much on its con- 
tinuance; we must face daily the certainty of final universal be- 
reavement and we must do it in the singing power of a heroic faith. 

“For though the fig tree shall not blossom. 

Neither shall fruit be in the vines; 

The labor of the olive shall fail, 

And the fields shall yield no meat; 

The flock shall be cut off from the fold, 

And there shall be no herd in the stalls: 

Yet will I rejoice in the Lord, 

I will joy in the God of my salvation.” 

— Rev. George A. Gordon, D. D. 

Every Day Tragedy (295-A). 

Some people will begin to arraign Divine Providence, and expatiate 
upon the cruelty and sinister dreadfulness of a tragedy. But, let me 
remind you, that tragedy all told is no greater in extent than what is 
taking place all around you every day you live. It is the element of 
the dramatic in it that makes it seem so, and that is all. Take that 
out, face the thing as it really is, and you are only confronted by an 
old, old fact, a fact of universal experience and which none of us 
can escape, namely, the fact of death. We have to die only once; 
we die alone, no matter how many more may die at the same time. 
More people are dying in the world at this moment than went down 
on the Titanic the other night, but each one will have to pass through 
the dread portals alone. It is curious how little we realize this. You 
may speak of twelve hundred dead in the sunken Titanic, but every 
one of those dead made the great transition separately from all the 
rest, and summed up in his or her experience all that the whole twelve 
hundred had to meet and know. If on’y one person had been drowned, 


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THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


that one person would have covered the whole territory of the disaster 
we are discussing, for no person has to die two deaths, though all 
must die. Death is an individual matter after all; and therefore the 
only reason why one dwells upon it specially this morning in connec- 
tion with the wreck of the Titanic is that that terrible event makes us 
think, whether we will or no, about what we all have one day to 
encounter, whether it come soon or late. — Rev. R. J. Campbell. ^ 


MYSTERIOUS PROVIDENCES. SUDDEN DEATH 


149 


ILLUSTRATIVE VERSES. 

Leave Them With God (295-B). 

O anguished heart, nigh breaking for the dead 
Who died and made no sign, 

Leave them with God: perhaps, ere life had fled. 

They saw, at last, the Saving Christ Who bled. 

Found their atonement in the Blood He shed. 

And trusted Love Divine. 

Leave All to God (295-C). 

Leave all to God: thy vision cannot scan 
His ways of Righteousness, His depths of grace; 

But thou shalt know, when thou dost see His face. 

How full of holy love His perfect plan. 

Leave all to God: but hear Him speak to thee, 

“Cling thou the more to Me when clouds are dark, 
Make sure that thou thyself art in the Ark; 

All else thou then wilt calmly leave to Me.” 

Out of Darkness Into Day (295-D). 

Fair visions gleaming through the darkness beckoned 
My buoyant steps along the sunny way; 

Sweet voices thrilled me, till I fondly reckoned 
That life would be one long blue summer day. 

This was the way my feet had gladly taken. 

And, blindly lured by that deceitful gleam, 

I would have wandered on, by God forsaken. 

Till death awoke me from my fatal dream. 

My pleasant path in sudden darkness ended, 

My footsteps slipped, my hope was well-nigh gone; 

I could but pray; and as my prayer ascended. 

Thy face, O Saviour, through the darkness shone. 

I woke from dreams; and, cured of all my blindness, 

I saw Thy Hand had checked my downward way: 

The pain was keen, but all in loving kindness, 

That led me out of darkness into Day. 

— J. D. Burns. 


Divine Providence (295-E). 

With God, all things together work for good: 

Nor less through tears, 

Than through life’s purest, sweetest joys, we learn 
To love the way we had misunderstood. 

For through the years 

He finds at length, who for the truth doth yearn. 
And knows that Heaven answers in return. 


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THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


I tread the path of mortals here below. 

But here and now 

The thorns that hedge me in are made to bloom, 

And flowers of hope on desert places grow, 

I know not how. 

A light, moreover, lifts the distant gloom, 

And what is now my aid, I thought my doom. 

— Selected, 

Their Monument (296-A). 

Peasant and merchant and millionaire. 

Soldier and scholar and man of the sea. 

Mourned by the world, they are resting where 
No towering monument ever may be; 

But the waves that go rolling above them there. 

Where the pitiless fogs hover over the tide, 

Shall never efface and shall never impair 
The glory they gained when they manfully died. 

With only an hour in which to pray 
Where Death had found them and would not wait. 

They sent the young and the weak away. 

Intrusting them to the whims of Fate; 

Robbed of hope, they had strength to stay 
While the helpless ones and the women went. 

And the dark sea, rolling till Judgment Day, 

Is their ever-enduring monument. 

Peasant and merchant and millionaire, 

Soldier and scholar and roustabout. 

By the torch’s fitful and feeble flare 
They manfully swung the lifeboats out; 

Whispering hopes that they might not share. 

They claimed the right of the strong and brave. 

And their fame shall live till the last men bear 
The last of all heroes to his grave. 

Christian and Jew, and humble and high, 

Master and servant, they stood, at last, 

Bound by a glorious, brotherly tie, 

When doubting was ended and hoping past! 

They stayed to show how the brave could die. 

While their helpless ones and the woment went, 

And the sea that covers them where they lie 
Is their ever-enduring monument. 

— S. E. Kiser. 

The Conquered (296-B). 

One is surprised to find so little in the Bible about success. It 
does not say: “Well done, good and successful servant,” but it does 
say: “Well done, good and faithful servant,” Fidelity to duty, loyalty 
to principle are the conditions for true plaudits at the end. 


MYSTERIOUS PROVIDENCES. SUDDEN DEATH 


151 


“I sing the hymn of the conquered, who fell in the battle of life — 

The hymn of the wounded, the beaten, who died overwhelmed in the 
strife: 

Not the jubilant song of the victors, for whom the resounding acclaim 
Of nations was lifted in chorus, whose brows wore the chaplet of fame — * 
But the hymn of the low and the humble, the weary, the broken in 
heart, 

Who strove and who failed, acting bravely a silent and desperate part; 
Whose youth bore no flower on its branches, whose hopes burned in 
ashes away: 

From whose hands slipped the prize they had grasped at: who stood 
at the dying of day 

With the work of their life around them, unpitied, unheeded, alone; 
With death swooping down o’er their failure, and all but their faith 
overthrown.” 

— E. C. Schaeffer, D. D. 

Rest (296-C). 

These lines were written a little before the death of the gifted 
authoress. 

We are so tired, my heart and I, 

Of all things here beneath the sky. 

One only thing would please us best — 

Endless, unfathomable rest. 

We are so tired; we ask no more 
Than just to slip out by life’s door; 

And leave behind the noisy rout 
And everlasting turn about. 

Once it seemed well to run on, too, 

With her importunate, fevered crew. 

And snatch amid the frantic strife 
Some morsel from the board of life. 

But we are tired; at life’s crude hands 
We ask no gift she understands; 

But kneel to him she hates to crave 
The absolution of the grave. 

— Mathilde Blind. 


Carpathla (296-D). 

Ship of the widows, of sorrow, of doom — 
Hail her home from the scene of gloom! 
Ship of the shadows of grief and tears! 
Welcome her home to the crowded piers! 
Ship of the shattered and sundered lives — 
Welcome her home with her stricken wives! 
Welcome her, wave to her, 

Over her head 
The shadowy wraiths 
Of dauntless dead! 


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THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


Ship of the widows, of youth turned gray 
In the awful woe of a single day; 

Ship of sorrow and shadow and care. 

Home from the seas of the dark despair. 

Flags half-masted and hearts a-weep, 

[Welcome her home from the heartless deep! 

[Welcome her, only 
With sohs, not cheers; 

Home to our sympathy. 

Home to our tears! 

— Baltimore Sun, 


God’s Afterward (296-E). 

God always has an “afterward” 

For every bitter thing. 

The flowers may fall, but fruit abides; 

The butterfly’s bright wing 

Is painted in its long night’s sleep; 

Each winter hath its spring. 

How glorious is the afterward 
When Easter joy-bells ring! 

God always has an “afterward”: 

The patriarch Job, of old, 

When in the fires was yet assured 
He should come forth as gold; 

And Joseph found it thus, when he 
Was by his brethren sold — 

A wealth of blessing God designed, 
Unfathomed and untold. 

God always has an “afterward” — 

An afterward of bliss; 

First night, then morning, formed the day. 
So must it end like this! 

His purpose, higher than our thought, 

We should be sad to miss; 

Though hidden, folded in his hand, 

Faith still that hand would kiss. 

God has a shining “afterward” 

For every cloud of rain; 

We may not see the meaning now 
Of sorrow and of pain, 

But nothing God permits His child 
Can ever be in vain; 

The seed here watered by our tears, 

Yields sheaves of ripened grain. 


MYSTERIOUS PROVIDENCES. SUDDEN DEATH 


153 


God always has an “afterward”; 

He keeps the best in store. 

And we shall see it hath been so 
When we reach yonder shore: 

The cross, the shame, He once despised, 

For the joy set before. 

And as we follow we shall find 
Death is Life’s opening door! 

A Mother's Love (297-A). 

Last night, my darling, as you slept, 

I thought I heard you sigh, 

And to your little crib I crept, 

And watched a space thereby; 

And then I stooped and kissed your brow, 

For O, I love you so — 

You are too young to know it now. 

But sometime you shall know. 

Some time, when in a darkened place 
Where others come to weep, 

Your eyes shall look upon a face 
Calm in eternal sleep; 

The voiceless lips, the wrinkled brow, 

The patient smile shall show — 

You are too young to know it now. 

But sometime you may know! 

Look backward, then, into the years. 

And see me here tonight — 

See, O my darling! how my tears 
Are falling as I write; 

And feel once more upon your brow 
The kiss of long ago — 

You are too young to know it now, 

But sometime you shall know. 

— Eugene Field. 


164 THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 

TEXTS AND TREATMENT HINTS. 

“Shall Not the Judge of All the Earth Do Right?”— Gen. 18:25 (297-B). 

I. He is perfectly holy and just. 

II. He is infinitely loving. 

III. We and our dear ones are entirely safe in His hands. 

“I Shall Know.”— 1 Cor. 13:12 (297-C). 

1. Now I am ignorant of much. 

2. Then these mists will roll away. 

“I Was Dumb, I Opened Not My Mouth, Because Thou Didst It” — 

Ps. 39:9 (297-D). 

That is not an easy thing to say. It needs a strong faith to 
say it: and yet what else can the heart of faith say than that? Get 
nearer to God yourself, crushed heart; think of this sore grief as 
meant to draw yourself at least nearer to Him. Leave it to Him to 
explain His own Righteousness at last, as He assuredly will. — Selected. 

“Clouds and Darkness Are Round About Him, But Righteousness 
and Justice Are the Foundation of His Throne.” — Ps. 97:2. (297-E) — 
Get nearer to God yourself, and the waves of sorrow will break quietly 
at the foot of that high Throne, and there will be “a great calm.” 

“What I Do Thou Knowest Not Now; But Thou Shalt Know Here- 
after.”— John 13:7 (298-A). 

1. Present ignorance with regard to many of God’s dealings is in- 
evitable. 

2. God comforts us, in the dark, by promising a dawn. 

“What Is That to Thee; Follow Thou Me.”— John 21:22 (298-B) 

1. God is under no obligation to reveal to us His wise purposes. 

2. Whether He provides an explanation of life’s happenings or not 
our duty is unquestioning obedience, unswerving following. 

“When I Thought To Know This It Was Too Hard For Me.” — Pc. 

73:16 (298-C). 

1. There is much in life that we cannot understand or explain. 

2. There need be nothing concerning which we cannot trust God’s love. 

“Thy Will Be Done.”— Matt. 6:10 (298-D). 

1. It is a wise will, not an arbitrary one. 

2. It is a loving will. 

3. It is our Father’s will. 

“Though My House Be Not So With God, Yet Hath He Made With 
Me An Everlasting Covenant, Ordered In All Things and Sure.” — 2 
Sam. 23:5 (298-E). A soul turning away from bitter special experiences 
to repose in the thought of God’s unfailing goodness, and thus es- 
caping despair. 


MYSTERIOUS PROVIDENCES. SUDDEN DEATH 


155 


“For Now We See Through a Glass, Darkly; But Then Face to Face: 
Now I Know In Part; But Then Shall I Know Even As Also I 
Am Known.” — 1 Cor. 13:12 (299-A). 

1. Life is often marked by inscrutable experiences. 

2. Earth utterly fails us as an interpreter of these things. 

3. We may find comfort for the present in the thought that in the 
future, they shall all be made plain. “I shall know.” 

“Though He Slay Me Yet Will I Trust Him.”— Job 13:15 (299-B). 

1. To trust only in the sunshine is not to trust God at all. 

2. Trusting God when appearances are against Him is the supreme 
test of a genuine trust. 

THE MEANING AND MINISTRY OF SUFFERING 

(The Galveston Disaster.) 

“He Himself Hath Suffered ”— Heb. 11:18 (299-C.) 

Bowing today in the shadow of the most awful disaster which has 
ever fallen upon an American city, and as our hearts tremble in sympa- 
thy with the multitudes who have been rendered destitute and home- 
less, or have been stricken with death, we ask ourselves for any word of 
comfort or of explanation in this continued tragedy of life of which this 
is but a single example. No doubt the full meaning of these sufferings 
is “hid with God’s foreknowledge in the clouds of Heaven;” but some 
hope of a possible good coming at last out of it all — 

“Light after darkness. 

Gain after loss, 

Strength after weakness. 

Crown after cross;” 

must be found, or the heart of humanity would break. For we are all 
sufferers. We are all children of sorrow. Each heart knoweth its own 
bitterness. 


“There is no flock however watched and tended 
But one dead lamb is there. 

There is no home however well defended 
But has one vacant chair.” 

We can come then as fellow sufferers with our afflicted neighbors 
in the South as we attempt to consider this morning the meaning of 
this great mystery of pain. We have done well to begin our thought 
on this subject with prayer, for he who loses his hold on God in the time 
of great sorrow, loses the only clue by which the human spirit can walk 
through this valley of the shadow of death, which we call earth, and 
not fall into a bottomless pit of despair. This world has well been called 
a “slaughter house resounding with the cries of a ceaseless agony,” 


156 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


The first sound from the lips of the babe is a cry, and the last sound 
from the wrinkled lips of age, a groan. Every life is a tragedy, and 
every biography a history of sorrow. 

And more than this; for struggle, and suffering, and death are now 
seen to be built into the fundamental structure of the world. The 
very foundations upon which we build our homes are composed of the 
skeletons of creatures which perished long millenniums ago. 

Suffering cannot be ignored. It cannot be dreamed out of exist- 
ence. One may shut his eyes and with clinched teeth cry out that there 
is no sickness, nor suffering, nor death; but even as he speaks his cry 
becomes a wail as his own body or heart is cut with some bitter pain. 
Even then he may perhaps sob out his belief that this misery of flesh 
and life is only an “appearance,” a false “claim” of the senses; but this 
“claim” of sickness and decrepitude looks like the real thing, and acts 
like the real thing, and feels like the real thing, and often kills like 
the real thing. The claim and the reality are alike except in name. 
And even these earnest mystics who revolt against the despotism of 
fact and boldly dare to affirm that earth is heaven, even they cannot 
bolt their own doors against the undertaker. A man may cheat his own 
senses, but he cannot cheat the grave. The Isle of Galveston, strewn 
with the dead bodies of men and women, and children, is the world in 
epitome; for the waves must dash sooner or later over every home and 
leave wreck and ruin behind. 

What shall we say then to all this? What can we say? If we 
cannot trust that, somehow, to all good people 

“good 

Will be the final goal of ill.” .... 

“That not a worm is cloven in vain; 

That not a moth with vain desire 

Is shriveled in a fruitless fire,” 

then there is nothing to be said; there is no hope for those who suffer, 
and no outcome or meaning in life. 

The only salvation against absolute despair for the stricken sufferer, 
is faith in God, or at least enough faith to cry out, “Lord, help mine un- 
belief.” Life and pain and death are all absolutely and equally inex- 
plicable without the postulate of a good God and a future life. 

But if we have a Father in Heaven who loves us, then we can be- 
lieve with certainty that while we may not understand altogether the 
meaning of pain, it has a meaning, and a meaning of good. 

Then, too, we dimly begin to see that everything points that way. 
Everything that is good in life now is due to struggle and has come to 
its perfection through suffering. All civilization is the child of suffering. 
The nations which have had to struggle most are the greatest nations. 
The tribes which have not had to struggle for existence against cold 
and hunger and enemies, have never even become nations. All progress 
has been born of pain. 

A distinguished scientist has recently said, that when modern 
science first made it plain that man had climbed to his present position 


MYSTERIOUS PROVIDENCES. SUDDEN DEATH 


157 


on a ladder, every round of which was stained with blood, it was an 
awful revelation which almost drove men insane, making of them pessi- 
mists and atheists; for it was found that all life was war — the song 
of the birds a war cry, and even the adornment of the butterfly merely 
war paint. But one further step changed this scientific gospel of despair 
into a gospel of hope. It was discovered that this suffering, against 
which we so revolted, was the cause of all progress towards perfection, 
and that pain was the mother of the highest forms of life and the 
highest forms of happiness. 

Indeed, progress has been well defined as ‘‘increase in the capacity 
for suffering.” The earliest animals were built to avoid suffering. 
They were as big as an animal could be and walk and their sensi- 
tive parts were protected by an almost impenetrable armor. But where 
are those animals now? They are gone, and science tells us they were 
beaten in the struggle of existence “by little animals with the nerves 
on the outside.” 

Man’s chief endowment, as contrasted with other animals, so the 
scientists say, is his ability to suffer more. Several new kinds of suf- 
fering were invented expressly for him. It has been well said that he 
alone, of all the animals; suffers in anticipation of coming perils, and 
grieves over the errors of the past. It is this greater capacity for suf- 
fering that has made men w r hat they are. 

I. Now we begin to see the application of the text. “He, Himself, 
hath suffered.” He, who is the highest of all and the best of all, has 
suffered most of all! There is no mistake stranger than that which 
imagines that sickness and suffering have some connection with lack 
of faith or lack of holiness, and testifies to God’s displeasure. 

II. “He, Himself, hath suffered!” — and where He has led we must 
follow if we would be like Him and grow into His likeness. The servant 
is not greater than His Lord. Whom God loved most, suffered most, 
and even of Him it was said, “He hath been made perfect through suf- 
fering.” — (Hebrews 2:10.) There is no other way. 

The Apostle Peter prays: “The God of all Grace, Who hath called 
us into His eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered 
awhile, make ye perfect.” — (1 Peter 3:10.) After that ye have suffered 
awhile! There is no other way. You cannot have perfection yonder or 
perfection here until “after that ye have suffered awhile.” 

We have already seen that the strength and growth of man, physi- 
cally and intellectually, in all past ages, has been determined by the 
struggle which he had to endure. That is true equally of moral and 
spiritual character. 

Lack of suffering is one of the greatest dangers physically and 
morally. When one ceases to feel pain he is in a dangerous condition. 
Pain is a protest against something which is wrong. As a great theo- 
logian has said, pain is a signal of danger — “the only signal in the 
moral world.” Without it the danger would be equally great but would 
not be recognized, and man would have no impulse to flee from it. 
Hunger is the signal that something is wrong with the physical nature. 


158 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


and that food is needed for its health. Pain of conscience is simply 
spiritual hunger and a signal that something is wrong with the moral 
nature, and that man must have for his comfort, as well as health, 
spiritual food. 

Pain, therefore, is a proof of God’s love for us. The gospel proves, 
and our best thinking agrees, that life is a school in which sorrow is 
one of the most efficient teachers. I think it was Edward Payson upon 
whom a friend called in time of sickness and said, “I am sorry to see 
you lying upon your back,” and he replied, “Do you know why God puts 
us on our back? It is because He wants us to look upward.” — Rev. Dr. 
Camden M. Coburn. 






VII. CHASTENING— AFFLICTION 


REFLECTIONS AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 

The Meaning of Affliction (299-D). 

The Meaning of Affliction. — The more one knows of the most af- 
flicted lives, the more often the conviction flashes across us that the af- 
fliction is not a wanton outrage, but a delicately-adjusted treatment. 

I remember that once to a friend of mine was sent a rare plant, 
which he set in a big flower pot close to a fountain basin. It never 
throve; it lived, indeed, putting out in the spring a delicate, stunted 
foliage, though my friend, who was a careful gardener, could never di- 
vine what ailed it. He was away for a few weeks, and the day after 
he was gone the flower pot was broken by a careless garden boy, who 
wheeled a barrow roughly past it. The plant, earth and all, fell into 
the water; the boy removed the broken pieces of the pot, and, seeing 
that the plant had sunk to the bottom of the little pool, never troubled 
his head to fish it out. 

When my friend returned, he noticed one day in the fountain a new 
and luxuriant growth of some unknown plant. He made careful in- 
quiries, and found out what had happened. It then came out that the 
plant was in reality a water plant, and that it had pined away in the 
stifling air for want of nourishment, perhaps dimly longing for the fresh 
bed of the pool. 

Even so has it been times without number with some starving and 
thirsty soul that has gone on feebly trying to live a maimed life, shut 
up in itself, ailing, feeble. There has descended upon it what looks at 
first sight like a calamity, some affliction unaccountable, and then it 
proves that this was the one thing needed, that sorrow has brought out 
some latent unselfishness, or suffering energized some unused faculty 
of strength and patience. — A. C. Benson. 

Afflictions Are Guide-Posts (299-E). 

What do I know about afflictions? I know only what everybody 
else knows — that they are guide-posts along the way of the pilgrim- 
age. If the pathway lies through struggle and pains and fears, patience 
and love, and foes and fightings, you’re pretty sure to be on the right 
road. What is this mighty “sea of troubles”? That’s the Red Sea. 
Go right ahead and see the glory of God. This is death in the desert? 
Speak to the rock, a-quiver with the heat glimmer, and see the foun- 
tains of life burst forth. That? That’s a king wailing the sorrow of a 
broken heart in the chamber over the gate. You’re on the right way. 
These? A long line of prison “finger-posts” — Peter and John and Paul 
and Silas — lots of prisons on the right road. This? A storm on Galilee. 
Good many storms on the “Jesus Way.” This headless body? John 
the Baptist. That one? Paul. This shadowy garden where the star- 


ICO 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


light gleams softly on the crimson dew of agony falling on the grass 
blades? Gethsemane. You have to pass through Gethsemane. This 
fearful hill? Calvary. This burst of glory and splendor of life and joy? 

Oh, Pilgrim, this is Easter morn! You’ve come the right way, and 
you’re Home, Pilgrim, you’re Home! 

Now, suppose you had avoided all this? Turned back to Egypt? 
Worshiped Diana, and kept out of prison? Made a little money by the 
sale of your Christ, like Judas? Gone around Gethsemane? Bowed to 
Pilate and avoided the Cross? — Robert J. Burdette. 

Joys Sweetened By Sorrows (300). 

Our joy will sometimes be made sweeter and more wonderful by 
the very presence of the mourning and the grief. Just as the pillar of 
cloud, that glided before the Israelites through the wilderness, glowed 
into a pillar of fire as the darkness deepened, so, as the outlook around 
becomes less and less cheery and bright, and the night falls thicker 
and thicker, what seemed to be but a thin, grey, wavering column in 
the blaze of the sunlight will gather warmth and brightness at the 
heart of it when the midnight comes. 

You cannot see the stars at twelve o’clock in the day; you have to 
watch for the dark hours ere heaven is filled with glory. And so sorrow 
is often the occasion for the full revelation of the joy of Christ’s pres- 
ence. — Alexander Maclaren. 

Trial a Source of Blessing (301). 

After a forest fire has raged furiously, it has been found that many 
pine-cones have had their seeds released by the heat, which ordinarily 
would have remained unsown. The future forest sprang from the ashes 
of the former. Some Christian graces, such as humility, patience, sym- 
pathy, have been evolved from the sufferings of the saints. The furnace 
has been used to fructify. 

The Service of Sorrow (302). 

“My son,” said the wise man, “despise not the chastening of the 
Lord, for whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and every son whom He 
receiveth.” Chastening is our seal of sonship. Pain brings many a man 
for the first time in his life to feel his imperfection and his sin, and hia 
need of an abiding helper, 

“Who hath trod the ways of pain 
Hath not met Him in the gloom 
Coming swiftly through the rain?” 

Just as the sweetest melodies must include some discord through 
the sharp and flat, so the sweetest notes of human character are never 
sounded till suffering has entered into the life. 

“The cry of man’s anguish went up unto God: 

‘Lord, take away pain! 

The shadow that darkens the world Thou hast made, 

The close coiling chain 


CHASTENING— AFFLICTION 


161 


That strangles the heart, the burden that weighs 
On the wings that would soar — 

Lord, take away pain from the world Thou hast made. 

That it love Thee the more!’ 

Then answered the Lord to the cry of His world: 

Shall I take away pain 

And with it the power of the soul to endure. 

Made strong by the strain? 

Shall I take away pity that knits heart to heart 
And sacrifice high? 

Will ye lose all your heroes that lift from the fire 
White brows to the sky? 

Shall I take away love that redeems with a price 
And smiles at its loss? 

Can ye spare from your lives that w'ould climb unto Mine 
The Christ on His cross?”* 

To lose suffering out of the world would mean to lose out of it the 
ladder up which man has climbed to every great achievement of the 
past; the only ladder by which any man can reach greatness and saint- 
liness. 

There is a sweetness of sympathy, a mellowness of spirit, a peace, 
a spiritual power which can only come “through suffering.” Whom 
God makes great, and whom God makes godly he first appoints to 
struggle. “All that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer.” — (2 
Tim. 3:12.) 

“I must suffer,” said the One whose name is above every name, “and 
enter into my glory.” That was the only way even He could enter into 
His glory. He gathered the thorns of humanity and wore them as His 
crown! 

So, according to the Scriptures, the greatest honor that can come 
to a Christian is to be allowed to know “the fellowship of His suffer- 
ings” (Phil. 3:10), and to fill up “that which is lacking of the af- 
flictions of Christ.” (Col. 1:24.) “I will show him how great things he 
must suffer for My name’s sake,” said our Lord of the one He most 
delighted to honor among the Apostles. (Acts 9:16.) “For unto you,” 
said Paul to the martyrs of the early Church, “Unto you it hath been 
granted in the behalf of Christ” — as the best answer by the Father of 
Christ’s best prayer for them — “not only to believe on Him, but also 
to suffer in His behalf.” (Phil. 1:29.) 

Those who know not by experience what suffering means — suf- 
fering of body, possibly, suffering of soul, certainly — and "have never 
know what it means to feel a “fellowship” with His sorrows, 

“Are not so much as worthy to stoop down 
And kiss the sacred footprints of our Lord 
Upon the feet of any such an one 
As lieth patient here beneath His hand; 

Whom Christ has bound on His own cross to lie 
Beside Him till Himself shall give release.” 


162 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


Only they who suffer with Christ here can reign with Him here- 
after, and though the mystery of pain cannot yet be fully explained, 
as no mystery of life can be explained, nevertheless we have inspired 
testimony that all these afflictions of life may work out for us yonder 
“an exceeding abundant and eternal weight of glory.” 

Even in this life, as we have seen, pain is one of man’s greatest 
blessings. 

May every stricken one, whose faith lays hold on Jesus, this day 
remember that “all things” — even these afllictions which seem so heavy 
— “all things,” even now, “work together for good to those who love 
God.” 

“He chose this path for thee, 

Though well He knew sharp thorns would pierce thy feet. 

Knew how the brambles would obstruct the way. 

Knew all the hidden dangers thou shouldst meet. 

Knew that thy faith would falter day by day; 

And still the whisper echoed, ‘Yes, I see 
This path is best for thee.’ ” 

— Camden M. Coburn, D. D. 

Suffering Rightly Borne Enriches Mankind (303). 

Remember that somehow suffering rightly borne enriches and 
helps mankind. — The death of Hallam was the birthday of Tennyson’s 
“In Memoriam.” The cloud of insanity that brooded over Cowper gave 
us the hymn, “God Moves in a Mysterious Way.” Milton’s blunders 
taught him to sing of “Holy light, offspring of heaven’s first-born.” 
Rist used to say, “The cross has pressed many songs out of me.” And 
it is probable that none rightly suffer anywhere without contributing 
something to the alleviation of human grief, to the triumph of good over 
evil, of love over hate, and of light over darkness. 

If you believe this, could you not bear to suffer? Is not the chief 
misery of all suffering its loneliness, and perhaps its apparent aimless- 
ness? Then dare to believe that no man dieth to himself. Fall Into 
the ground, bravely and cheerfully, to die. If you refuse this, you will 
abide alone; but if you yield to it, you will bear fruit which will sweeten 
the lot and strengthen the life of others who, perhaps, will never 
know your name, or stop to thank you for your help. — F. B. Meyer. 

The Discipline of Hardship (304). 

In April the peach orchard lends a faint, pink flush to the distant 
hillside, and that stands for the moralities. In September the ripe fruit 
lends a golden blush of clustered food to the same hill. And such is 
the fruit of religion. Great is the importance of the root moralities, 
but roots and boughs imply the ripened fruit. 

The rule of life is health, prosperity and sunshine. But God hath 
appointed wrestling, defeat and suffering as important members of his 
corps of teachers. 

Ours is a universe where progress is secured in the fruits and grains 
through chemical reactions. Steel is iron plus fire; soil is rock plus 


CHASTENING— AFFLICTION 


163 


fire billow and ice plow; statues are marble plus chisel and hammer 
strokes; linen is flax plus the bath that racks, the club that flails, the 
comb that separates, the acid that bleaches. 

Manhood is birth-gift plus struggles, temptation, wrestling and re- 
fusals to go downward and determination to climb upward. The saint 
is a man who has been carried off the field on his shield, victorious 
over inbred sin and outside temptation. Men who drift are men who 
drown. — Newell Dwight Hillis. 

Comfort In a Cloud (305.) 

A friend of mine told me of a visit he had paid to a poor woman, 
overwhelmed with trouble in her little room; but she always seemed 
cheerful. She knew the Rock. “Why,” said he, “Mary, you must have 
very dark days; they must overcome you with clouds sometimes.” “Yes,” 
she said, “but then I often find there’s comfort in a cloud.” “Comfort 
in a cloud, Mary?” “Yes,” she said; “when I am very low and dark, 
I go to the window, and if I see a heavy cloud I think of those precious 
words, ‘A cloud received Him out of their sight.’ And I look up and 
see the cloud, sure enough, and then I think — well, that may be the 
cloud that hides Him, and so you see there is comfort in a cloud. — 
Selected. 


God's Deliverance (306). 

God delivers us out of evils by turning them into greater good. He 
chastens us in the world that we may not be condemned with the world. 
He turns the tears of sorrow into the pearls of a brighter crown. By 
weaning us from the transitory, He leads us to the eternal. By empty- 
ing us of the world, He fills us with Himself. He makes the via crucis 
the via lucis. He causes us, in the very fire, to thank Him that our 
light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far 
more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. — Dean Farrar. 

Affliction. (307) — After a severe attack of pleurisy, George Moore 
wrote in his diary, “God often reads us the story of our lives. He 
sometimes shuts us up in a sick-room, and reads it to us there. I shall 
never forget all that I learned this time last year.” 

Our Loss Their Gain (308). 

A young woman was mourning the death of her mother. Her grief 
was so vehement that her friends feared to let her be present at the 
services preceding the removal of the dear remains from the house. 
To their surprise, however, not only was she perfectly calm, but in her 
face shone a great light, a light that was not dimmed even by the 
tears that filled her eyes as she took the last long look at the beloved 
face. Later she told them that as she stood near the casket she saw 
her mother, not lying still and cold, but living, glorious and radiant, 
while near her was the form of One “like the Son of God.” “I could 
not grieve,” she said simply, “when I looked upon my mother’s joy.” 
So, to the eye of faith, does the risen Christ still reveal the glorious 
life into which the departed have entered. — S. S. Times. 


164 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


Our True Friends (309). 

If it is true that the river of the water of life, which flows from 
the throne of God, is the only draught that can ever satisfy the im- 
mortal thirst of a soul, then whatever drives me away from the cis- 
terns and to the fountain is on my side. Better to dwell in a dry and 
thirsty land, where no water is, if it makes me long for the water that 
rises at the gate of the true Bethlehem, the house of bread, than to 
dwell in a land flowing with milk and honey, and well watered in every 
part. If the cup that I fain would lift to my lips has poison in it, or if 
its sweetness is making me lose my relish for the pure and tasteless 
water that flows from the throne of God, there can be no truer friend 
than that calamity, as men call it, which strikes the cup from my 
hands, and shivers the glass before I have raised it to my lips. Every- 
thing is my friend that helps me towards God. Everything is my 
friend that leads me to submission and obedience. — Alexander Mac- 
laren. 

Affliction’s Fruitage. (310). 

Schubert said that of all his compositions the best haa been writ- 
ten in days when he had most suffering to endure. The same may be 
said of David’s Psalms and Paul’s Epistles. The best and most helpful 
of the Psalms were written in the heart’s blood mingled with tears. The 
richest and most comforting of Paul’s Epistles came from an under-, 
ground dungeon in Rome. So, still, deep suffering may be giving to 
many not only a richer personal experience of Christ’s infinite grace, 
and a truer sympathy with other sufferers, but also a larger power for 
service, and opportunities of usefulness which, perhaps, they would 
have altogether missed had their sufferings been less. Some who are 
in the fining-pot of trial are tempted to complain, and ask how a loving 
God can find it in His heart to make them suffer so; but they know 
not what their loss would be if the fire should be put out, or even be 
suffered to cool. We do not see how present sorrow can be blessing at 
the end. Trust God to make no mistakes. Let Him take His own 
way and His own wise time, and the completion of the work will justify 
the process, and fill the lips with song. — Knight. 

God’s Way (311). 

Many have sorrows, sufferings, losses, and distresses in their com- 
mon days. Some find life very hard. It may be sickness, with its pain 
and depression. It may be bereavement, which brings loneliness and 
sorrow. It may be the loss of money, which sweeps away the earnings 
of years and leaves want. It may be the failure of friendships which 
have not proved true, making the heart sore and empty. Some people 
ask why it is they must suffer so, if God really loves them. We shall 
not try to answer the question, for we may not attempt to speak for 
God. But we may always say, “God is making us.” Michael Angelo, 
as he hewed away at his marble, would watch the clippings fly under 
the heavy strokes of his mallet, and would say, “As the marble wasfes 
the image grows.” In the making of men there is much to be cut away 
before the hidden beauty will appear. The marble must waste while 


CHASTENING— AFFLICTION 


165 


the image grows. We never need be afraid of the hard days and the 
painful things. If the marble had a heart and could think and speak, 
it might complain as the sculptor’s cutting and hewing go on so un- 
feelingly, but whep at last the magnificent statue is finished, the mystery 
of the hammer and chisel is made plain. This is what the artist was 
doing all the while. God’s ways with us in his providences are incom- 
prehensible. But when the life stands at last before God, complete, 
there will no longer be any amazement, any asking why. In all the 
strange and hard experiences, God has been making men of us. — J. R. 
Miller, D. D., in “The Gate Beautiful.” 

When God’s children pass under the shadow of the Cross of Cal- 
vary, they know that through that shadow lies their passage to the 
Great White Throne. For them Gethsemane is as Paradise. God fills it 
with sacred presences; its solemn silence is broken by the music of 
tender promises; its awful darkness softened and brightened by the 
sunlight of heavenly faces and the music of angel wings. — F. W. Farrar. 

The Function of Sorrow (312). 

The simplest and most obvious use of sorrow is to remind of God. 
Jairus and the woman, like many others, came to Christ from a sense 
of want. It would seem that a certain shock is needed to bring us in 
contact with reality. We are not conscious of our breathing till ob- 
struction makes it felt. We are not aware of the possession of a heart 
until some disease, some sudden joy or sorrow, rouses it into extraor- 
dinary action. And we are not conscious of the mighty cravings of our 
half divine humanity, we are not aware of the God within us, till some 
chasm yawns which must be filled. 

The account of life which represents it as probation is inadequate. 
The truest account of this mysterious existence seems to be that it is 
intended for the development of the soul’s life, for which sorrow is in- 
dispensable. Every son of man who would attain the true end of his 
being must be baptized with fire. It is the law of our humanity that 
we must be perfected through suffering. — From “Select Thoughts.” 

“Those Who Suffer Well” (313) 

How colorless and flat would be the recoru of mankind’s life un- 
adorned with the beautiful strength of those who suffer well. 

And how cold and forbidding, too, would be the world whence pity 
was eradicated because there lived none worthy to be pitied. 

To perpetuate the world’s record of heroism and to evoke anew the 
world’s fountains of humanizing and brother-making sympathy, may 
not the sick man rejoice to know that these are the high uses to which 
disease dedicates him? 

A suffering earth, in truth, but what a gloriously brave old earth 
since first weakness of man’s body tested the unconquerable strength of 
man’s soul. A royal succession they who through the accumulating cen- 
turies have borne their pains with “heads bloody but unbowed.” 

The torch of the sufferer’s courage has passed on from generation 
to generation and the flame is yet in no wise dim. 


166 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


You are fallen sick? Misfortune, indeed! Yet honor, too! You 
are chosen in your day to pass on the undimmed torch. 

Will you let its light flicker? Men watch and God waits to see. — The 
Continent. 

Only a Little While (314). 

A Galilee whose sea is crystal, whose city walls are built of jasper, 
its streets of gold and every gate a pearl, with its thousand times ten 
thousand of white-robed angels who will throng to welcome you, lies a 
little further onward when you have passed Samaria. What matter the 
cares and troubles by the way? What recks it if with aching brow and 
troubled heart we journey, and with feet that are torn and bleeding 
from the stones along the way, if Galilee lies beyond us? Here is com- 
fort, inspiration for our hearts. By this thought life’s sorrows are 
comforted and the hard and dangerous road through this dark Samaria 
is illumined and made resplendent by this blessed hope of immortality. 
Let the strife be bitter if it will — let dangers gather and sorrows in- 
crease. It is a thought of blessed comfort that this short life will soon 
be over, that though the conflict be a bitter one ’tis not so very long. 

“A little while for patient vigil-keeping, 

To face the storm and wrestle with the strong.” 

And the rest and joy and peace beyond are for eternity. This thought 
of immortality, could we only grasp it, ought to make a Bethel out of 
the blackest wretchedness. 

“Oh, for a faith to grasp heaven’s bright forever. 

Amid the shadows of earth’s little while.” 

—Wilton Merle Smith, D. D. 

Sorrow a Gift From God (315). 

How selfish, how narrow our life would be if we had never known 
sorrow, if life had gone on and on unruffled and untroubled! Sorrow 
clears the vision; it sweeps away the mist of carefulness and thought 
for earth which has arisen in our path, and gives a clearer vision of 
the Father. The deepest sorrow, if accepted and borne in His name, 
some way bears us nearer to the world of spirit, to the heaven of life. 
There is a Divine alchemy in the fiery touch which purifies and en- 
lightens the soul, a peculiar power which opens the life to heavenly 
vision. Have you not felt the whisper of His love as you stood alone 
in a death-chamber after some precious life had passed through the 
portals; felt the wonderful illumination and word of power in the after- 
hour when you stand in the thick darkness and the voices of earth are 
hushed. — Selected. 


All Meant for Our Making (316). 

There is a purpose in circumstance. Nothing in our lives is for 
naught. All things which have been given us — even our chains — are 
meant for our making — meant for the working out of our goodly 
destiny. 

Bunyan, in prison, apparently cursed by sunless hours of solitude 
and loneliness, was a greater Bunyan than if he had been free to roam 
afield, writes Richard Wightman in the Metropolitan Magazine. The 


CHASTENING— AFFLICTION 


167 


walls which shut his body in could not confine his soul; it escaped them 
and went out into all the world to lift to higher levels the hope and 
vision of mankind. 

The log cabin in which Lincoln was horn lent its ruggedness and 
simplicity to the man himself, and has become a shrine which men 
approach with reverent feet as to some holy place which love and 
truth have glorified. 

The hard lot is ever the school in which greatness is taught, and 
the best scholars are those who perceive the purpose of difficulty and 
do not grow bitter as they grapple with it. The very genius of pro- 
gressive living consists in a capacity to appreciate the day and what 
the day holds; to find in all seasons and events a divine conspiracy to 
refine the soul and make it a greater soul; to hail hardship with grim 
gladness and bless the hills which must be climbed; to look with kindly 
eyes upon every human thing; to accept with complacence the small 
circle of opportunity until it has been shown that we are worthy to 
move in a wider one. Along no other path may we come to our best 
and largest estate of being and serving. — Selected. 

Suffering in Vain (317). 

But the sorrow that is meant to bring us nearer to Him may be in 
vain. The same circumstances may produce opposite effects. I dare 
say there are people listening to me now who have been made hard 
and sullen and bitter, and paralyzed for good work, because they have 
some heavy burden or some wound that life can never heal, to be 
carried or to ache. Ah, brethren, we are often like shipwrecked crews, 
of whom some are driven by the danger to their knees, and some are 
driven to the spirit casks. Take care that you do not waste 
your sorrows; that you do not let the precious gifts of dis- 
appointment, pain, loss, loneliness, ill health, or similar afflictions 
that come into your daily life mar you instead of mending you. See 
that they send you nearer to God, and not that they drive you farther 
from Him. See that they make you more anxious to have the durable 
riches and righteousness which no man can take from you than to 
grasp at what may yet remain of fleeting earthly joys. — Alexander Mac- 
laren, D. D. 


Suffering Broadens Sympathy (318). 

Another blessing of bereavement is the preparation for sympathy 
and helpfulness which comes through sorrow. We have to learn to be 
gentle — most of us, at least. We are naturally selfish, self-centered, 
and thoughtless. Other people’s griefs do not touch us, save in a super- 
ficial way. Sympathy is not a natural grace of character, even in most 
refined natures. Of course, we all feel a momentary tenderness when 
a friend or a neighbor is in any trouble. We cannot pass a house with 
crepe on the door, and not, for an instant, at least, experience a sub- 
duing, quieting sentiment. But the power to enter really into sym- 
pathy with one in grief or pain, comes only through a schooling of our 
owu heart in some way. While a home is unbroken the sorrows of 


168 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


other homes do not find responsive echoes in the love that dwells there. 
True, “love knows the secret of grief,” but even love that has not 
suffered cannot fully understand the heart’s pain. But when a home 
has been broken, its inmates have a new power of helpfulness. Crepe 
on a neighbor’s door means more after that. Mrs. Pauli never wrote 
any truer words than in her “Mater Dolorosa,” written after she had 
laid her own baby away amid the white blossoms: 


“Because of one small low-laid head all crowned 
With golden hair 

Forevermore all fair young brows to me 
Are fair.” 

— S. S. Times. 


Be Not Cast Down (319). 

Christians are sometimes perplexed and discouraged because of their 
trials. They know not what God is doing with them. They fear that 
He is angry with them. But they are “His workmanship.” He is pre- 
paring them for their destination in the temple of His grace. These 
trials are applied to qualify and advance them. They will only “per- 
fect that which concerneth” them. Howard was taken by the enemy 
and confined in prison. There he learned the heart of the captive; 
and his experience, originating in his suffering, excited and directed his 
thoughts and led him into all his extraordinary course of usefulness and 
fame. “It is good for me” says David, “that I have been afflicted.” 
“I know,” says Paul, “that this shall turn to my salvation.” “For our 
light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us far more 
exceeding and eternal weight of glory.” — William Jay. 

The Ministry of Affliction (320). 

All affliction is to the good man disciplinary, and will come to an 
end. It will end in good, in glory. “Though weeping endureth for a 
night, joy cometh in the morning.” Is it poverty that afflicts? Is it the 
unkindness of the world that afflicts? Is it a disappointment of hopes 
that afflicts? Is it temptation that afflicts? Whatever it be, it will not 
continue forever; its work will end; its purpose will be accomplished, 
and it will pass away. The cloud forms, drops its rain, and passes 
away for the sun to shine and flowers to bloom. The storm gathers, 
purifies the air, and passes away for the fragrant and healthful calm 
to settle like a benediction on the land. Affliction comes, administers 
its discipline, and passes away for the peace, joy, and glory to appear. 
Consider, then, the temporal nature of affliction in contrast with the 
eternal nature of the good which affliction is sent to accomplish. The 
fires of the furnace long since went out from which came the refined 
gold that will shine for a thousand years as a jewel or a crown. The 
Apollo Belvedere stands today a miracle of beauty, two thousand years 
after the chisel perished which gave it its immortal grace. Cologne’s 
great spires pierce the sky, and will for centuries to come; but the 
scaffolding beneath which they grew and the tools which piled the mar- 
ble toward the clouds will vanish in a day. So affliction is but for 
the moment; it passes away, but leaves an eternal blessing; it may 


CHASTENING— AFFLICTION 


169 


vanish more quickly than furnace fire or sculptor’s chisel or builder’s 
scaffolding; but the work it has done for the soul, or the work God 
has done by it, will be more lasting than jewels of gold or statues and 
temples of stone. — “The Religious Instinct of Man.” 

Dark Days (321). 

It has been pointed out that Walter Scott became great as a man 
and realized the highest expression of his genius not until the wave 
of adversity swept over his life. Mr. Benson pointed out the common- 
place character of Scott’s personal journal up to the time before the 
failure of his publishers took place. But after that failure a new note 
became vocal in the great writer’s journal, a new personality emerged. 
One remembers in this connection the letter which, upon the day suc- 
ceeding the news of the disaster Scott wrote to an intimate friend: 
“I have walked for the last time in these halls which I have built, 
looked for the last time, in all probability, at the domain which I have 
planted, but death would have taken these things from me if misfor- 
tune had not.” The letter concludes with the words: “Adversity is to 
me a tonic and a bracer.” “Look at that manuscript,” says Ruskin, 
referring to Scott’s novel of “Woodstock” which was in course of 
writing at the time, “written in the very maelstrom of that adversity 
and not by the quiver of a hair stroke, not by the suggestion of a 
single tremor in the hand, not by an erasure or change, not by any 
falling off in the creative interest of the story could anyone detect that 
when Scott wrote the second part of that novel he did so under a cloud 
of bitter adversity.” 

And biography is fun of such unmaskings of the reserve forces of 
character through the pressure of the dark days succeeding the bright 
days in life. — Selected. 

Blessings From Sorrow (322). 

A still nobler kind of relief from undue dwelling upon personal 
sorrow is found in sympathy and care for others. A loving regard for 
the welfare of those about us, and unselfish devotion to their comfort, 
the habit of ministering to their needs and of sympathizing with them 
in their trials, will greatly support us in seasons of severe disappoint- 
ment or personal bereavement. Our unwillingness to burden others 
with our griefs will help us to bear them bravely and quietly. Self- 
sacrifice does not create insensibility to suffering, but it gives strength 
to endure it with fortitude and even with cheerfulness. 

Strength for the victorious endurance of many of life’s disasters 
and troubles is afforded by an understanding and appreciation of real 
values. The prime object of life is not pleasure, or ease, or personal 
promotion. Still less, is it wealth. It is not things, but spiritual sub- 
stance. It is not happiness, but character. In the fires that purify 
one can be content if he has no love for dross. The sorrows of child- 
hood are real, but transient. By becoming a man one outgrows them. 
Those whose aspirations are spiritual, who hunger and thirst for 
righteousness, are above many of life’s storms. They do not feel them. 
They look down upon them. They see them from above and so behold 


170 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


them transfigured and glorified by eternal sunshine. A noble spiritual 
aim will subordinate all of life’s events to itself, getting gain to char- 
acter from adversity as well as prosperity. All things work together 
for the realization of the loftiest ideals of those who have spiritual 
vision and aspiration. All the events of our life, including our afflictions, 
are material out of which we may make what we will. The soul that 
yearns for completeness will win glorious gain from losses and crosses 
and heart-breaking bereavements. — “The Christian Intelligencer.” 

A Prayer for Patience Under Trials (323). 

If we still fear the future and shrink from what it may bring, grant 
us so constant a belief in Thy government of all things, and in Thy 
wise and loving design, that we may be confident that the future will 
help and not hinder us in good, and that step by step Thou art leading 
us to the perfect experience of Thy love, and the fullest development 
of our own nature. Forbid that we should feel as if we had lost every- 
thing, or the best things, because we have lost many of this world’s joys 
and satisfactions. May all calamity bring into our hearts a stronger 
faith, a more enduring patience, a tenderer sympathy. Thou hast 
made us so that we crave for joy; fill us with Thy joy. Keep us from 
shrinking or repining at the trials or disappointments of life. Help us 
at all times and in all circumstances to say: “Good is the will of the 
Lord concerning us.” Whether Thou seest meet to send us joy or 
sorrow, may we have the assurance that both come from our Father, 
who knows what is best for us. — Marcus Dods, D. D. 

God Tests Us By Trouble (324). 

Even the great Captain of our salvation was made “perfect through 
suffering” and “learned obedience through the things which He suffered.” 
If even He, the Perfect Man, reached his complete equipment for His 
work through a soldier’s endurance of hardship. His followers should 
not be reluctant to undergo a similar training if they aspire to approx- 
imate, in any measure, a like result. 

Rev. Howard W. Pope tells the story of a Christian blacksmith 
who had a good deal of affliction, and, being challenged by an unbe- 
liever to account for it, gave this as his explanation: “I don’t know 
that I can account for these things to your satisfaction, but I think I 
can to my own. I am a blacksmith. I often take a piece of iron and 
put it into the fire and bring it to a white heat. Then I put it on the 
anvil and strike it once or twice to see if it will take temper. If I 
think it will, I plunge it into the water and suddenly change the tem- 
perature. Then I put it into the fire again, and again I put it into the 
water. This I repeat several times. Then I put it on the anvil and 
hammer it, and bend it, and rasp and file it, and make some useful 
article which I put into a carriage, where it will do useful service for 
twenty-five years. If, however, when I first strike it on the anvil, I 
think it will not take temper, I throw it into the scrap heap and sell it 
at half a penny a pound. 

“I believe my heavenly Father has been testing me to see if I will 
take temper. He has put me into the fire and into the water. I have 


CHASTENING— AFFLICTION 


171 


tried to bear it as patiently as I could, and my daily prayer has been, 
‘Lord, put me into the fire if you will; put me into thd water if you 
think I need it; do anything you please, O Lord, only, for Christ’s 
sake, don’t throw me into the scrap heap!” — A. T. Pierson, D. D. 

Not a Disablement, But an Equipment (325). 

You may make of your loss not a disablement, but an equipment. 
You have learned a new, great lesson. Henceforth you should be more 
competent for that finest, most delicate ministration, sympathy toward 
those in trouble. A new temptation has come to you, a drawing toward 
the self-absorption of sorrow. Resist it bravely; let your loss be not a 
barrier, but a tie with other lives. And, O, my sad-hearted friend, just 
so surely as behind yonder clouds the sun is shining, so certain will 
there issue out of this trial of yours, if only you will meet it as best 
you can, a good to yourself and to others greater than you now can 
think. — James F. Merriman. 

God Understands (326). 

Every man bears his own burden, fights his own battle, walks in 
the path which no other feet have trodden. God alone knows us through 
and through. And He loves us, as Keble says, better than He knows. 
He has isolated us from all besides that He alone may have our per- 
fected confidence, and that we may acquire the habit of looking to Him 
alone for perfect sympathy. He will come into the solitude in which 
the soul dwells, and make the darkness bright with His presence, and 
break the monotonous silence with words of love. We have Him only 
to speak to; He alone can understand us. He will rejoice with us when 
we rejoice, and weep with us when we weep. The heart knoweth its 
own bitterness; Gods knows it, too; and though a stranger cannot in- 
termeddle with its joy. He, whose temple and dwelling-place is the soul 
that loves Him, is no stranger, but the soul’s most intimate and only 
friend. — R. W. Dale, D. D. 

True Comforters (327). 

When affliction comes into the home, it is then we learn the blessed- 
ness of companions who live close to Jesus. They can bind up our 
wounded hearts as no one else can. They can find the right word 
and get near to us with the prayer that comforts. It is not Gehazi that 
the heart-broken mother wants, nor even Elisha’s staff, it is Elisha, the 
man of God. — Selected. 


Life’s Mingled Cup (328). 

The other day one of my boys, pointing to a heavy piece of iron 
wedged on one side of the driving wheel of a locomotive, asked what 
it meant. I reminded him that the counterbalance, as the piece of 
metal is called, was placed there to offset the weight of the crank pin 
and driver which communicate the power to the wheel. And then the 
thought occurred to me how much the counterbalance plays its part in 
the activities of human life. Our bright days are counterbalanced by 
dark days. Our times of prosperity are offset by times of adversity. For 


172 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


every sorrow there is in the divine providence a corresponding gain, and 
at the heart of every defeat there is for the man of faith the prophecy 
of new victory. Go where we will in the great universe of love and 
we find everywhere the working of this divine law of counterpoise — 
the divine love compensating for every earthly loss. “Where sin abounds 
grace doth much more abound.” Where death walks with insolent feet 
life triumphs in exultant song. When earthly joys wither heavenly hope 
blooms in eternal beauty. When time wears out its vesture into thread- 
bare decay eternity robes herself in immortal splendor. 

We want to realize, of course, that these bright days and dark in 
life which alternate in such swift succession are all part of a divine plan. 
These fleeting changes of prosperity and adversity, joy and sorrow, life 
and death, are not haphazard. They are not the chance happenings of 
a cruel and heedless fate. Nor are they ebullitions of God’s fickleness or 
forgetfulness of His children. Not to tantalize and tease the soul, not 
that we may take our joys with trembling and our sorrows with cringing 
does our Heavenly Father set the dark days over against the bright 
days in life. God sends these seasons for the growth of what is worthiest 
and best within us. The dark days and the bright days are as necessary 
to the poise of your character as the counterbalance is necessary to the 
equilibrium of the wheel. It needs no profound thinking to realize what 
a grinding monotony life would be if there were no shadows to offset its 
sunlight. What an insipid thing joy would become — a surfeit in the 
banquet of life — if there were no bitters to cleanse the palate of the 
soul. — The Northwestern Christian Advocate. 

Shadows (329). 

Railway engineers do not like the shadows which are cast across 
the rails ahead of them by trees and other objects along the way. Some- 
times these weird specters of the night look like men. Now they take 
the form of horses and cattle. And well these men of the throttle know 
that if these shadowy visitants are what they look as if they might be, 
danger lies close ahead. But soon they see that it is only moonlight 
playing them tricks. 

A good share of the trouble Christians have in this world comes 
from shadows. Life’s way does not always run through meadow land 
and prairie. Winding along the side of high hills, dipping deep into 
leafy dells, following the course of moonlit streams, and often seeming 
to plunge straight into the heart of some mountain of trouble, grim ob- 
jects appear to lie on every hand to frighten us, and make us think that 
there never will be peace again. Then suddenly the thing we feared 
has melted away, and we have seen only shadows. Does it seem to us 
we are walking alone? Shadows. Close by our side is the dear One 
who never forgets His own. Are we fearful that we are not living 
up to our best, but that at last we shall meet the Father’s frown? 
Shadows. Trusting Him, we are ever coming a little nearer to the ideal 
we have set before us. Do we fancy that our prayers are never to be 
answered? Only shadows. He is ever better than our fears. Some day 
we will know that the faintest cry we sent up was heard and never 
forgotten. — Edgar L. Vincent. 


173 


CHASTENING — AFFLICTION' 

Enrichment by Grief (330). 

It may be that somewhere, in this daily path of yours, a great sor- 
row is lurking, a sorrow that will blot, for a season, the sun from the 
heavens, and will lie upon your heart like a great load. What are you 
going to do with it when it comes? Are you going to be crushed by 
it, to be embittered and hardened by it, to let it cast a baleful shadow 
over your life and the lives of all who come near you? If you meet it 
as fate, that is what it will do for you; your life will be blasted. But that 
is not what it ought to do for you. It ought to bring you the largest, 
the richest, the most precious of all the gains of life. For this it is 
appointed; if you use it as it ought to be used, this will be its fruit. 
True and deep is the poet’s insight when he sings: 

“Count each affliction, whether light or grave, 

God’s messenger sent down to thee; do thou 
With courtesy receive him: rise and bow. 

And, ere his shadow pass thy threshold, crave 
Permission first His heavenly feet to lave; 

Then lay before Him all thou hast. Allow 
No cloud of passion to usurp thy brow 
Or mar thy hospitality; no wave 
Of mortal tumult to obliterate 
Thy soul’s marmoreal calmness. Grief should be 
Like joy, majestic, equable, sedate. 

Confirming, cleansing, raising, making free; 

Strong to consume small troubles; to commend 

Great thoughts, grave thoughts, thoughts lasting to the end." 

Such is the ministry of sorrow; such are the great and beautiful 
gifts grief always bears in her hands to those who receive her as God’s 
messenger. And if, when your trouble comes to you, instead of raging 
against it in complaints and deplorings, which, to say the best of them, 
are futile, you will but stop and ask how you best may use the oppor- 
tunity that has come to you; how you may keep your load from crush- 
ing others; how you may find surcease from your own sorrow in bearing 
the burdens of others; how the purifying influence of this suffering may 
make you gentler, kindlier, more helpful, more sympathetic — then the 
Scripture will be fulfilled in you which says that tribulation worketh 
patience, and patience, experience, and experience, hope; and you will 
come to see that your great sorrow was your soul’s great opportunity. 
Surely this has been the experience of multitudes in all the ages who 
have found their lives enriched and ennobled by their griefs. — Washington 
Gladden. 


Trouble Relaxes the World's Hold (331). 

All pain, sickness, weariness, distress, languor, agony of body or 
mind, whether in ourselves or others, is to be treated reverently, seeing 
in it our Maker’s hand passing over us, fashioning by suffering the im- 
perfect or decayed substance of our souls. Every sorrow is a billow 
on this world’s troublesome sea, which we must pass over on the Cross 


174 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


to bear us nearer home. Each trouble is meant to relax the world’s 
hold upon us, and our hold upon the world; each loss to make us seek 
our gain in heaven. — Dr. Pusey. 

Prayers Answered by Trials (332). 

It is evident now that some of our most unpleasant experiences are, 
in the wisdom and goodness of God, the means by which God answers 
prayer. We pray for patience — the quality of soul that endures: but 
how can there be patience without pain, drudgery, and deferred hope? 
Patience and pleasant ease are incompatible. We pray for a tender 
heart, for a sympathetic nature, for love; but could this beautiful spiritual 
grace exist in a world where pain, helplessness, and death never come? 
Our very bereavement may be the direct answer to a prayer for spiritual 
excellence. “Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not 
receive evil?” Can we not trust His spiritual purposes? — From “Unan- 
swered Prayers.” 


Looking Back From Heaven (333). 

When you get to heaven and look back you will see that the days 
which* now appear draped in mourning have been your best days — the 
fullest of good. When the plow has cut deepest, tearing up your gar- 
den of happiness and destroying the flowers of gladness, you will find 
loveliness a thousand times more wonderful. 

God never destroys — He only and always fulfills. Out of sadness He 
brings light. Out of pain He brings health. Out of disappointment He 
brings appointments of good. Every year is a harvest growing out of 
past years, each one better than the one left behind. 

“Why do we worry about the nest? 

We only stay for a day. 

Or a month, or a year, at the Lord’s behest, 

In this habitat of clay. 

“Why do we worry about the road, 

With its hill or deep ravine? 
a dismal path or a heavy load 
We are helped by hands unseen.” 

—William T. Ellis. 

Heaven’s Compulsion (334). 

Let us thank God for the changes which will not let the deepest 
and best part of our nature alone. They are heaven’s compulsion. 
Without them our human life would be an unexplored country. We 
should never penetrate to its interior, never climb its heights of vision, 
never discover its hidden wealth, never reap its finest harvests, never 
know what we are, what we can be, what we can do. — John Hunter. 

The Rich Fruitage of Trouble (335). 

Lazarus' death seemed an irreparable calamity; but the chief 
mourners themselves must have thanked God for it when they saw the 
outcome. Some time ago a hurricane devastated the rubber plantations 
in a certain section of Central America. It seemed at the time an un- 


CHASTENING— AFFLICTION 


175 


mitigated evil, but lo! from the ruins sprang up young trees so much 
greater in number as to make the plantations several times more pro- 
ductive. The owners are now thanking God for the devastation which 
at first they thought meant ruin. Could we but see the end from the 
beginning we would praise Him for much at which we now bitterly re- 
bel. — S. S. Times. 

None Immune From Trouble (336). 

Power is no insurance against trouble either. This friend of mine 
had the power that goes with a genial character; business capacity, and 
wealth. Troubles came while he possessed the foregoing; he could not 
withstand the trial and loss of his power. Job had the power that 
goes with a clear conscience and great wealth. But he lost his wealth, 
his family and his health. One may see the same thing illustrated 
among the crowned heads of Europe, the nobility of England and the 
wealthy of America. Domestic troubles seem to be unusually frequent 
and fatal among some of the best-known families in the United States. 
There are skeletons in almost every closet, no matter what our power 
may be. 

Wealth is no insurance against trouble. Naaman, a captain in the 
Syrian army, could have commanded any amount of money, but all the 
physicians of Syria could not cure him, and he had to turn to the humble 
prophet of Jehovah in Israel. Mr. Harriman owned enough stock in 
twenty-five thousand miles of railways to absolutely control the whole. 
In one way and another he controlled some fifty thousand miles more in 
railways. He controlled steamships that traversed the Atlantic and Pa- 
cific of fifty thousand miles additional. He owned a castle at Arden, 
with an estate of thousands of acres, yet he had his troubles, and at 
last he was overcome by the Conqueror of all. 

In the time of trouble, what is there left to encourage and to up- 
hold and to anchor our faith upon except the God of Abraham, Isaac 
and Jacob? — Selected. 

Compensation for Suffering (337). 

Only the soul which has suffered can understand the heart of Christ. 
Has a fair-weather friend proved faithless in the hour of need? Then 
you may know something of the meaning of the sorrowful look upon the 
Master’s face as He gazes through the open door at Peter, whom still He 
loves. Have you been misunderstood, vilified, falsely accused of selfish 
motives, persecuted for righteousness’ sake? Then you may grasp some- 
what of the significance of Jesus’ struggle with the Pharisees. Have 
the very people whom you are trying to serve, those whom you love 
to the point of martyrdom, turned to destroy you? Then you may grasp 
one aspect of the tragedy of Calvary. Youth shrinking from pain craves 
to hear of the heroic Christ; but the grandmother, in whose soft eyes 
hides the tender light of sympathy, longs, rather, to behold the Man of 
Sorrows, for she has learned through submission to life that a crown 
of thorns is the noblest crown. — Zion’s Herald. 


176 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


The Fruitage of Suffering (338). 

There is little attempt in the Bible to solve the problem either of 
the origin or meaning of pain and evil. Israel rarely philosophized. 
Even where there is the nearest approach to a philosophy, as in Job, 
Job refuses to question one way or the other. He falls back on faith. 
He trusts God. He will trust Him though God slay him. This is the 
burden of the Epistle to the Hebrews. The author is sure of two things; 
first, that God loves, so there is purpose in the pain He sends us, 
whether of soul or body. The only explanation of chastisement is not 
to know why it comes, but who administers it. We who are grown up 
enough to know our earthly father loved us, see now that the punish- 
ment was born out of love, not cruelty. We know the Heavenly Father’s 
love is infinite, so while we cannot understand, we know that he chas- 1 
tises in love for our good. But our author went further. He was a wise 
observer of life. He saw that suffering made great and perfect souls. — 
Frederick Lynch. 

When Sorrow Comes (339). 

Now, when I read in the New Testament that “Jesus wept,” I re- 
member that those tears fell in sympathy with Martha and Mary when 
they told Him that their brother was dead, and, remembering that Jesus 
is the same yesterday and today and forever, I say to all earth’s mourn- 
ing and sorrowing ones: “When you baptize the graves of your dead 
with your tears, you shed not those tears alone; the heart of the Eternal 
beats in tenderest sympathy with you.” 

Jesus Christ is God’s perfect revelation of Himself to the world, 
and He is the same in the past, the present, and the future. His teach- 
ings remain the law of life for all men everywhere. His forgiving Spirit 
still says: “Neither do I condemn thee. Go and sin no more.” He 
still says: “Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and forbid them 
not,” and He still gives His unfailing sympathy to earth’s bereaved and 
sorrowing ones. In Him the sons of men may safely trust. — The Change- 
less Christ. 

God Is Love (340). 

We may be sure that under all our afflictions is God’s tender and 
wise love. Not one of our sorrows can be spared, as we shall know here- 
after. “One interested in entomology secured with much difficulty a 
fine specimen of the emperor moth in larvae state. With deep interest 
he watched the little creature as it wove about itself the cocoon, which 
in shape resembles a flask. At length the time drew near for it to 
emerge from its wrappings and spread its wings of exceeding beauty. 
Long and hard was its struggle to force its way through the neck of 
the flask. The watcher’s pity was aroused and he cut the cords, thus 
making the passage easy. But, alas! his kindness was cruelty. This 
struggle was needed to develop the wings. This severe pressure was 
necessary to cause the flow of fluids which created the marvelous hues 
for which this species is noted. Spared this, its wings were small and 
weak, dull in color, and its whole development imperfect.” — Selected. 


CHASTENING— AFFLICTION 


177 


Suffering (341). 

Suffering is of two kinds: pain which we endure in our own persons 
— Christ was “a Man of Sorrows;” and pain which we know by familiar- 
ity with others’ suffering — Christ was “acquainted with grief.” 

The Christian rejoices in tribulation — in God; but that in spite of, 
not because of, tribulation. 

We are perfected through suffering. What worthy crown can any 
son of man wear upon this earth except a crown of thorns? A Christian’s 
motto everywhere and always is victory. 

A man’s work is not done upon earth as long as God has anything 
for him to suffer; the greatest of our victories is to be won in passive 
endurance; in humbleness, in reliance, and in trust we are to learn to 
he still, and know that He is God. — F. W. Robertson. 

His Healing and Consolation (341-A). 

We all, in turn, must face our forlorn hours of saddest bereavement. 
For us all, sooner or later, our house must be left unto us desolate. 
But . . . these natural sorrows are, and are meant to be, full of 
blessedness; the light of God shining upon them transmutes them into 
heavenly gold. The wounds which God makes, God heals. The fire 
which kindles the grains of frankincense upon His altar, at the same 
time brings out* their fragrancy. All that He sends, if borne submis- 
sively, becomes rich in mercy. Upon the troubled soul which seeks Him, 
His consolations increase “with the gentleness of a sea which caresses 
the shore it covers. — Dean Farrar. 

Tribulation (342). 

In the New Testament we read that “in the world we shall have 
tribulation,” that “through much tribulation we shall enter into the 
kingdom of God;” that we “glory in tribulations also;” and that we 
shall be “patient in tribulation.” (Rom. 12:12.) That is the genuine 
climax: to be patient in tribulation. These highest things are the re- 
ward of simple faithfulness. The true heart enters into all the fulness 
of this true life that is hid with Christ in God. 

The Hebrew disciples were thus reminded by their faithful and 
ever vigilant apostle: “By faith Enoch was translated that he should 
not see death, and was not found, because God had translated him: for 
before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God.” 
This testimony has never been withheld from any soul that pleased 
God by the exercise of the faith that works by love. It never will be 
withheld from any soul that is fighting this good fight of faith. 

To the believers at Ephesus their spiritual father and guide wrote: 
“All things that are reproved are made manifest by the light; for what- 
soever doth make manifest is light. Wherefore he saith. Awake, thou 
that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light. 
See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeem- 
ing the time because the days are evil.” (Eph. 5:13-16.) “Walk cir- 
cumspectly,” that is, look around you: see where you are going and who 
are with you. — Bishop Fitzgerald. 


178 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


Crosses. (343). 

We have need of all our crosses. When we suffer much, it is be- 
cause we have strong ties that it is necessary to loosen. We resist, and 
we thus retard the divine operation; we relieve the heavenly hand, 
and it must come again. It would be wiser to yield ourselves at once to 
God. That the operation of His providence which overthrows our self- 
love should not he painful to us would require the intervention of a 
miracle. Would it be less miraculous that a soul, absorbed in its own 
concerns, should in a moment become dead to self than that a child 
should go to sleep a child and wake up a man? — Fenelon. 

Sorrow a Very Real Thing (344). 

Sorrow is very real and very dark. No false philosophy can be- 
guile us from this sad conviction. If any man should say there is no 
reality in sorrow and pain, we could not argue with him. If he is sin- 
cere, his mental constitution is not capable of appreciating an argument; 
and if he is insincere, he is not open to argument. We know from 
experience and consciousness that sorrow and pain are real. 

Sorrow may be shared. This is a mystery. Your friend may not 
only stand by you in time of trouble and speak encouraging words, but 
he may lay his heart down by the side of your stricken heart and feel 
the same pain you feel. He may so share it as to make it easier for 
you to bear. The mother shares the sufferings of her child. The wife 
shares the troubles of her husband. Christians may, and often do, share 
each other’s sorrows. 

And cannot our Heavenly Father share our sorrows? He is touched 
with the feeling of our infirmities. Earthly friends are limited on every 
side. But He is not limited. He is strong enough to bear every burden 
we can put upon Him. He invites us to cast our burden on Him. He 
careth for us. 

As sorrow is lightened by being shared, so joy is increased when it 
is shared. So also our Heavenly Father shares our joys. To every faith- 
ful soul He says: “Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.” And He en- 
ters into our joys, also. Jesus taught us to think of God as a Father, 
and we know full well that a father takes delight in the happiness of 
his children. He enters into their joys with all his heart. Nothing 
pleases him more than to know that his children are happy and pros- 
perous. God is like that. When our hearts sing for joy, He is pleasetf. 
In the Word of the Lord we are taught to “rejoice with them that do re- 
joice,” and nothing is more certain than that all our pure and innocent 
joys are shared by Him who is the foundation of all holy joy. — Christian 
Advocate. 


The Sick-Bed Hero (345). 

Where is the world’s greatest scene of heroism? On the battlefield* 
Aboard the fighting warship? In the locomotive cab with certain wreck 
ahead? On the ocean liner’s deck when water is pouring into the hold? 
Down in the depths of the burning mine with escape cut off? Up aloft 


CHASTENING— AFFLICTION 


179 


amid the flames in some great building where dauntless firemen risk 
their own lives to save imprisoned inmates? Along the midnight streets 
where officers pf the law brave the lurking assassin’s pistol? 

Yes, in all these places there is real heroism that “brightens human 
story” and proves the stalwart stature of the human soul. 

But none of these pictures reflects the highest ascent of courage 
which the intrepid spirit of man achieves. There is a spot where less 
of grandeur hovers, but immeasurably more of superb and unquailing 
courage defies the direst that calamity can bring. 

The world’s greatest scene of heroism is the sick-room — the cham- 
ber and couch of the patient sufferer who fights alone and unweaponed 
with the armored enemy, Death. — The Continent. 

Faith Tested (346). 

i A jeweler gives as one of the surest tests for diamonds, the “water 
test.” He says: “An imitation diamond is never so brilliant as a 
genuine stone. If your eye is not experienced enough to detect the 
difference, a simple test is to place the stone under water. The imita- 
tion stone is practically extinguished, while a genuine diamond sparkles 
even under water and is distinctly visible. If you place a genuine stone 
beside an imitation under water, the contrast will be apparent to the 
least experienced eye.” Many seem confident of their faith so long as 
they have no trials; but when the waters of sorrow overflow them, their 
faith loses all its brilliancy. It is then that true servants of God, like 
Job, shine forth as genuine jewels of the King. — Homiletic Review. 

Vision From the Valley (347). 

A well-known minister wished to ascend a tower that commanded 
a fine view of the surrounding country. “Come this way, sir,” said the 
guide, leading him to some steps which looked as if they led into a 
vault. “But I want to ascend, not descend!” “This is the way up, sir.” 
A few steps down led to many steps up. So his Guide led Joseph down 
that He might lead him up to those heights of vision and power prepared 
for those who honor Him.” — Sunday School Chronicle. 

The Wrong Side (348). 

Dr. George F. Pentecost tells about going to see a parishioner who 
was in deep affliction. He found her embroidering a sofa pillow cover. 
He asked her to let him take it in his hand. He purposely turned it 
on the wrong side, and then remarked to her that it did not seem beau- 
tiful to him, and that he wondered why she should be wasting her time 
upon it. “Why, Mr. Pentecost,” she replied, “you are looking at the 
wrong side! Turn it over.” “That is just what you are doing,” he re- 
plied, “you are looking at the wrong side of God’s workings with you. 
Down here w r e are looking at the tangled side of God’s providence; hut 
He has a plan — here a stitch and there a movement of the shuttle — 
and in the end a beautiful work.”— S. S. Times. 


180 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


Songs in Sorrow (349). 

A little seven-year-old boy fell into one of the deep excavations for 
the New York subway one day, and was taken, bruised and suffering, 
to the nearest hospital. When the doctor began to examine his injuries 
little James drew a deep breath. “I wish I could sing,” he said, look- 
ing up at the big doctor. ‘T think I’d feel weller then.” “All right, 
you may sing,” said the doctor; and James began. So brave and sweet 
was the childish voice that, after the first verse, there was a round of 
applause from the listeners. As the doctor went on with his examina- 
tion the boy winced a little, but struck up his singing again. The 
nurse and attendants, hearing the sweet, clear soprano, gathered from 
all parts of the building, until he had an audience o.f nearly a hundred. 
Through all the pain of the examination the child never lost the tune; 
and everybody rejoiced when the doctor announced: “Well, I guess 
you’re all right, little man; I can’t find any broken bones.” “I guess it 
was the singin’ that fixed me,” said James. “I always sing when I feel 
bad,” he added simply. — Onward. 

Why Afflictions Come (350). 

“Why are afflictions Beni upon the people of God?” That is one of 
the easy questions. I don’t know. And yet I reckon I know as much 
about it as anybody. I don’t know, for that matter, why afflictions are 
also sent upon wicked people. I don’t know why innocent children suf- 
fer for the sins of their parents. But they do. I don’t know why 
Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by an actor, vanity-inflated with over- 
whelming sense of his own importance. I don know why Socrates was 
poisoned while his judges remained in office. I don’t know why Jesus 
Christ was crucified while Pilate sat on the judgment seat and Herod 
continued to pollute a throne with iniquities. I don’t know why, for three 
hundred years, God’s people, sheep of His hand and people of His pas- 
ture, walked on burning plowshares under skies of brass, while storms 
of persecution rained upon them in every form of horrible torture and 
fearful death. 

But I do know that that is the way the church conquered the world 
for Christ. I do know that not one god of its persecutors is left in the 
world today, save as a broken fragment in a temple of dust. 

What do I know about pain, and sorrow, and trouble? I know only 
what everybody knows — I know what has grown out of the heart-soil 
scarred by the plow and torn by the harrow. I look at the receding 
storm and I see the splendor of the rainbow. — Robert J. Burdette, D. D. 

Sorrow Develops Character (351). 

The leaves of the aromatic plant shed but a faint odor as they 
wave in the air. The gold shines scarcely at all as it lies hid in the 
ore. The rugged crust of the pebble conceals from the eye its interior 
beauty. But let the aromatic leaf be crushed; let the ore be submitted 
to the furnace; let the pebble be cut and polished; and the fragrance, 
the splendor, the fair colors are then brought out: 


CHASTENING— AFFLICTION 


181 


“This leaf? This stone? It is Thy heart 
It must be crushed by pain and smart. 

It must be cleansed by sorrow’s art — 

Ere it will yield a fragrance sweet. 

Ere it will shine, a jewel meet 
To lay before thy dear Lord’s feet.” 

The same law is observable in spiritual character, which rules the 
formation of natural. How often in a smooth and easy life do men, who 
have something far better beneath, appear selfish, effeminate, and 
trifling! Suddenly they are thrown into some position of high trust, 
great responsibility, or serious danger — are called upon to face an en- 
emy, or submit to the hardships of the campaign — and lo! the character 
shows a stuff and a fiber — ay, and a tenderness for others — which no 
one ever gave it credit for. Resolute will, dauntless self-sacrifice, con- 
siderateness, show themselves, where before we could see nothing but 
what was pliant and self-indulgent. Trial has unmasked latent graces of 
character; and although spiritual character is a thing of a higher order 
than natural, yet it is developed according to the same laws of the mind. 
— Goulburn. 

Sorrow's Revealing Power (352). 

These bright days and dark days in life as they come and go, some- 
times in rhythmic cadence and sometimes in bewildering confusion, 
are also part of a divine revelation. They are days of revealing as well 
as days of discipline. God sends these alternating seasons into your 
life to reveal certain qualities within you, to call into play certain 
capacities, to make vital certain possibilities in your nature which the 
monotony of an unbroken experience could never bring. The changing 
days of life unmask the reserves of character. It is, of course, a truism 
that a man never knows how much he can endure until the day of ad- 
versity comes. — Selected. 

Death's Uplifting Influence (353). 

There is a beautiful and uplifting influence in the presence of death 
which nothing else brings in quite the same degree. Many a woman 
has become a better wife and a better mother for weeping with those 
who weep. The little petty vexations of home life which come trooping 
up to torment, shrink back in the face of deep affliction, and leave one 
strengthened in the thought that love and kindness and gentleness — 
all that makes for happiness — alone count. Life is too short to be spent 
in fret and worry, and nothing but death can so impress that truth on 
the mind of the careful and troubled housewife. If it is a husband who 
is being carried from his home, she resolves to be more tender to her 
own; if a little child, in her mind she clasps her wee ones nearer her 
heart. All that is compassionate, all that is holy, all that is pure comes 
to the surface to help in the resolution to lead a broader, fuller life, 
and thus make herself more helpful to her human kind. To be able to 
comfort, to lift up, to encourage and to help those in distress repays 


182 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


every true woman for the pain she endures at sight of suffering she 
might avoid. A doll no doubt escapes much of sorrow by being a doll, 
but a flesh and blood woman who chooses to be a doll rather than a 
woman, simply to avoid the ministry of pain, has but a narrow and barren 
existence. — Hilda Richmond. 


Suffering (354). \ 

In the Old Testament, God is represented as a Destroyer with a 
plumb-line in his hand. Now, a plumb-line is usually employed for the 
purpose of building up, but God is represented as using it for the w’orfe 
of destruction. “But the cormorant and the bittern shall possess it; 
the owl also and the raven shall dwell in it; and he shall stretch out 
upon it the line of confusion, and the stones of emptiness.” Jehovah is 
represented as using the plumb-line in pulling down, inasmuch as he car- 
ries out this reverse of building with the same rigorous exactness as 
that with which a builder carries out his well-considered plan. The 
grand idea pictured by the prophet is, that in judgment God accom- 
plishes his purpose with extremest exactness and discrimination. The 
blizzard owns the same rule as the zephyr; the storm that scatters is 
measured as delicately as the sunshine that ripens; one gracious will 
fashions the flower, and points the thorn; the same curious wisdom that 
creates, ultimately dissolves the organism into the dust. Heaven de- 
stroys as it builds, with line and plummet. What a mighty comfort it 
is, then, to know that the seeming irrationality of pain is not real, and 
that all suffering is adjusted to capacity and need! Amid all the con- 
fusion, waste, ruin, sweats, tears, and blood of the groaning creation, 
God stands with the measuring-line, dealing to every man trial, as He 
assigns to every man duty, according to his several ability. “For He 
knoweth our frame; He remembereth that we are dust.” — W. L. Watkin- 
son, “The Transfigured Sackcloth.” 

The Sculptor’s Chisel (355). 

You are a block of rough marble. You may some time come to be 
a statue of splendid proportions, but must be chiseled and hammered 
before that consummation can be reached. Grief, struggle, disappoint- 
ment, the whole range of sad experiences which fill life so full, are the 
tools with which the Great Artist wfill change your shape by slow de- 
grees, and convert you from a mere block to a thing of beauty. — George 
H. Hepworth, D. D. 


The Meaning of Sorrow (356), 

How is it that a genuine Christian recuperates after being stricken 
down by a severe adversity or a sharp affliction? Simply because his 
graces survive the shock. For one thing, his faith is not destroyed. 
When a ship is drifting toward a rock coast, and cannot be kept off the 
shore by her sails, she still has her anchor left; but if the cable snaps 
she is swept hopeless on the rocks. So when your hold on God is gone, 
all is gone. The most fatal wreck that can overtake you in times of 
sorrow is the wreck of faith. But if in the darkest hour you can trust 
God, though He slay, and firmly believe that He chastens you for your 


CHASTENING— AFFLICTION 


183 


K 

profit, you are anchored to the very throne of love and will come off 
conqueror. Hope also is another grace that survives. Some Christians 
never shine so bright as in the midnight of sorrow. One might have 
thought that it was all over with John when he was exiled to Patmos, 
or with John Bunyan when he was locked up in Bedford jail. But they 
were all put in the place where they could be the most useful. 

And that reminds me to say that your sorrows may be turned to 
the benefit of others. An eminent minister who was under a peculiarly 
severe trial, said to me, “If I could not study and preach the Word to 
the utmost, I should go crazy.” Active operation is both a tonic and a 
sootliingosedative to a troubled spirit. Turn your sorrows outward into 
currents of sympathy and deeds of kindness to others, and they will 
become a stream of blessings. Working is better than weeping; and if 
you work on till the last morning breaks, you will read in that clear 
light the meaning of many of your sorrows. — Dr. Theodore L. Cuyler. 

None Are Exempt (357). 

God has His chosen and peculiar people, but He never spares the 
rod to spoil His child. I had a visit from a friend the other day who was 
broken-hearted in unexpected grief. A little rivulet of life had made his 
meadow beautiful, when suddenly its music was no more. And “Oh,” 
he said to me, “if I had been wicked — if I had been a rebel against 
God, I might have understood it; but it is hard to be dealt with thus 
when I have striven to serve Plim, and tried to be true to Him in home 
and business.” You see at the heart of his so bitter grief there was a 
thought that is common to us all. My friend was like Elijah at his 
stream, saying, “I am a prophet and it can never dry.” And one of 
the hardest lessons we must learn is that the name and nature of our 
God is love, yet for the man who trusts and serves Him best, there is 
to be no exception from the scourge. — Mornson. 

Perfect Through Suffering (358). 

Consider therefore how God makes a man great. Now and then an 
emergency arises in society, through organized^wrong and entrenched 
oppression. A million slaves groan by day and with bitter tears at night 
exclaim against the cruel taskmaster, crying, “How long, O God, how 
long!” Then God stretches forth his hand upon some child to make 
him brave. The angel of His presence draws near to some poor man’s 
house, and takes a little babe in his arms. He calls to His side the 
angel of suffering and whispers, “Take thou this little child and rear him 
for Me and make him great. Plant his path with thorns and sharp 
rocks, until the slave can track his path of crimson; load his little back 
with burdens, and make him strong by carrying; break his heart with 
suffering and make him sensitive to the sighs of slaves. Lead him 
through the desert and its blinding heat, that he may bring the pilgrims 
gently to the water springs. Make his face more marred than the face 
of any man of his generation, that the poor and weak may follow a 
leader who was in all points broken-hearted as they were. Then, when 
suffering hath made him brave, and burden-bearing hath turned to a 
giant’s strength, bring him back, and with him we will free slaves.” In 


184 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


this school of suffering Moses was reared to gianthood. In this uni* 
versity of pain, persecution, and obloquy Paul was nurtured to greatness. 
Under this tutelage Jesus grew, going by way of Gethsemane and Cal- 
vary toward the world’s throne and the universal crown. God Himself 
is the great sufferer, the King of sorrows, toiling up the hills of time, 
His locks wet with the dew of the night, His feet bare, His heart broken, 
never sleeping and never slumbering in His ceaseless solicitude to re- 
cover his lost son Absalom. As men go toward greatness they go to- 
ward complexity of faculty, fulness and richness of gifts, sensitiveness 
and therefore liability to suffering. — Newell Dwight Hillis, D. D. 

Following Christ in the Furnace (359). 

I believe that persecuted ones have more blessedness than any other 
saints. There were never such sweet revelations of the love of Christ in 
Scotland as when the Covenanters met in the mosses and on the hill- 
sides. No sermons ever seemed to be so sweet as those which were 
preached when Claverhouse’s dragoons were out, and the minister read 
his text by the lightning’s flash. The saints never sang so sweetly as 
when they let loose those wild-bird notes among the heather. The flock 
of slaughter, the people of God that were hunted down by the foe, these 
were they who saw the Lord. I warrant you that in Lambeth Palace 
there were happier hearts in the Lollard’s dungeon than there were in 
the archbishop’s hall. Down there where men have lain to rot, as did 
Bunyan in Bedford jail, there have been more dreams of heaven and 
more visions of celestial things than in the courts of princes. The Lord 
Jesus loves to reveal Himself to those of His saints who dare take the 
bleak side of the hill with Him. If you are willing to follow Him when 
the wind blows in your teeth and the snowflakes come thickly till you 
are almost blinded, and if you can say, “Through floods and flames, if 
Jesus lead, I’ll follow where He goes,” you shall have such unveilings of 
His love to your soul as shall make you forget the sneers of men and 
the sufferings of the flesh. God shall make you triumph in all places. — 
C. H. Spurgeon. 


Facing Trouble in Faith (360). 

Your thorn in the flesh is — what? Whatever it be that disorders, 
annoys, grieves you, makes life dark, and your heart dumbly ache, or 
wets your eyes with bitter tears — counseled Samuel Longfellow, brother 
of our poet — look at it steadily, look at it deeply, look at it in the thought 
of God and His purpose of good, and already the pain of it will begin to 
brighten. — Selected. 


Crowns For Victors (361). 

There is no virtue in mere suffering. There is no goodness inherent 
in pain. Had there been nothing on the Cross but the human figure of 
the Son of God, writhing in mortal agony, the spectacle had been repul- 
sive. The submission to the reality of the cross was its glory. The en- 
durance of actual bodily pain, positive anguish of mind and soul, — this 
set the brilliants, outshining the stars, in the crown of victory. — Burdette* 


185 


CHASTENING— AFFLICTION 
Sometime (362). 

“Sometime, when all life’s lessons have been learned, 
And suns and stars forevermore have set, 

And we shall see how all God’s plans are right, 

The things o’er which we grieved with lashes wet. 
Will flash before us out of life’s dark night. 

As stars shine most in deeper tints of blue; 

And we shall see how all God’s plans are right. 

And how what seems reproof was love most true.'* 

Grace Sufficient (363). 

The way is long, my Father, and my soul 
Longs for the rest and quiet of the goal: 

While yet I journey through this weary land 
Keep me from fainting, Father, take my hand. 
And safe and blest, lead up to rest 
Thy child. 

The way is long, my child, but it shall be 
Not one step longer than is best for thee; 

And thou shalt know when thou at last dost stand 
Safe at the goal, how I did take thy hand, 

And, safe and blest, with Me shall rest. 

My child. 

— The Changed Cross. 

Pain's Furnace (364). 

Pain’s furnace-heat within me quivers; 

God’s breath upon the flame doth blow; 

And all my heart in anguish shivers, 

And trembles at the fiery glow: 

And yet I whisper, “As God will;’* 

And in His hottest fire am still. 

— Julius Sturm. 

The Tearless Morn (365). 

0 Joy that seekest me through pain, 

1 cannot close my heart to Thee, 

I trace the rainbow through the rain, 

And feel the promise is not vain 
That morn shall tearless be. 

— G. Matheson. 


The Cry (366). 

The mistakes of my life have been many, 
The sins of my heart have been more. 
And I scarce can see for weeping; 

But I’ll knock at the open door. 


186< THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 

I am lowest of those that seek Him, 

I am weakest of those who pray; 

But I come as the Saviour bids me. 

And He will not say me nay. 

— U. L. Bailey. ) 

The Answer. 


Rest, weary heart! 

The penalty is borne, the ransom paid. 

For all thy sins full satisfaction made! 

Strive not to do thyself what Christ has done, 
Claim the free gift, and make the joy thine own; 
No more by pangs of guilt and fear distrest. 

Rest! calmly rest! 

— H. L. L. 

The Joys That Remain (367). 

Nuggets and dust upon the surface lie, 

But not the true continuing vein of gold; 

Melted in fire and prisoned in the rock 
Its boundless wealth deep treasure-chambers hold. 

So life’s chance pleasures shine, exhausted soon; 

But when man seeks the joys that shall remain, 

He finds them gleam from fire and from rock, 
Prisoned by fate and purified by pain. 

— Priscilla Leonard, in the Outlook. 

Love’s Chastenings (368). 

When thou hast thanked thy God for every blessing sent, 
What time will then remain for murmurs or lament? 

When God afflicts thee, think He hews a rugged stone, 
Which must be shaped, or else aside as useless thrown. 

— Richard Chenevix Trench, D. D. 

Songs in the Night (369). 

“Our peace is in His -will.” So sing the saints 
Above, the happy, holy, shining throng 
Of sinless souls; in joyous endless song. 

With gladness full and free from all restraints. 

“Our peace is in His will.” In earth’s complaints, 

In exile, want and torture, under wrong. 

Great hearts have learned to suffer and be strong;' 
God’s will makes firm the weakest soul that faints. 

To all who love His will he doth impart 
Sweet peace that fills their loyal souls with praise, 
Songs in the night and strength for weary days. 


CHASTENING— AFFLICTION 


187 


Courage (370). 

The hardest things to hear we never tell; 

We wear a mask to every human eye; 

We smile, and bravely answer, “All is well!” 

But naught is hidden from the deity. 

How good it is that One can surely know. 

And give the sympathy for which we yearn; 

Strength in our weakness, patience in our woe. 

And cheer to meet the worst at every turn 

Of life’s most crooked pathway. It is best 
There are both hills and valleys on our way£ 

The level ground gives little for a test 
Of brave endurance, or a strenuous day. 

Fight hard or no one wins. Tell Him, aside. 

Of all the disappointments, all the fears. 

The wrecks of plans, the hopes unsatisfied; 

But show the world no sign of loss nor tears. 

—Sarah K. Bolton. 

A Single Gold Hair (371). 

" ‘God lent him, and takes him,’ you sigh.— 

Nay, there let me break with your pain: 

God’s generous in giving, say I, 

And the thing which he gives, I deny 


"So look up, friends! You who indeed 

Have possessed in your house a sweet piece 
Of the heaven which men strive for, must need 
Be more earnest than others are, speed 
Where they loiter, persist where they cease. 

"You know how one angel smiles there. 

Then courage! ’Tis easy for you 
To be drawn by a single gold hair 
Of that curl, from earth’s storm and despair 
To the safe place above us. Adieu!” 

The Golden Lesson (372). 

Do not cheat thy heart and tell her, 

“Grief will pass away, 

Hope for fairer times in future 
And forget today.” 

Tell her, if you will, that sorrow 
Need not come in vain; 

Tell her that the lesson taught her 
Far outweighs the pain. 


—Adelaide A. Proctor, 


188 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


Light Beyond (373). 

The way is dark, my Father: cloud on cloud 
Is gathering thickly o’er my head, and loud 
The thunder roars above me. See, I stand 
Like one bewildered; Father, take my hand. 

And through the gloom lead safely home 
Thy child. 

The way is dark, my child, but leads to light; 

I would not have thee always walk by sight. 

My dealings now thou canst not understand? 

I meant it so — but I will take thy hand. 

And through the night lead up to light 
My child. 

— The Changed Cross. 

The Bitter Cup (374). 

I saw a cup sent down and come to her 
Brimful of loathing and of bitterness; 

She drank with livid lips that seemed to stir 
The depth, not make it less: 

But as she drank I spied a Hand distil 
New wine and virgin honey; making it 
First bitter-sweet, then sweet indeed, until 
She tasted only sweet. 

— Christina Rossetti. 

The Loom (375). 

A blind boy stood beside a loom 
And wove a fabric; to and fro 
Beneath his firm and steady touch 
He made the busy shuttle go 

“How can you weave,” we pityingly cried. 

The blind boy smiled, “I do my best; 

I make the fabric good and strong, 

And one who sees does all the rest.” 

O happy thought! Beside life’s loom, 

We blindly strive our best to do. 

And He who marked the pattern out 
And hold the threads, will make it true. 

— Selected. 


Sweetened Waters (376). 

She waited long on God, 

And He forsook not; through the gloomy vale 
She leant upon His staff until His rod 
Brake forth in blossoms pale. 


CHASTENING— AFFLICTION 


189 


Then did her spirit bless 
The gracious token; then she saw the rife 
Salt-crusted standing pools of bitterness 
Spring up as wells of life. 

— Dora Greenwell. 


A Friend In Trouble (377). 


Lord! a whole long day of pain 
Now at last is o’er; 

Darkness bringing weary strain 
Comes to me once more. 


Come then, Jesus! o’er me bend, 
And my spirit cheer; 

From all faithless thoughts defend, 
Let me feel Thee near. 


Round me falls the evening gloom, 
Sights and sounds all cease; 

But within this narrow room 
Night will bring no peace. 


Then if I must wake or weep 
All the long night through, 
Thou the watch with me wilt keep, 
Friend and Guardian true! 

— Lyra Germanica. 


Humble Under Chastening (378). 


Though crooked seem the paths, yet are they straight 
By which Thou draw’st Thy children up to Thee; 
And passing wonders by the way they see. 

And learn at last to own Thee wise and great. 


Let not my proud heart dictate, Lord, to Thee, 

But tame the wayward will that seeks its own. 

And wake the love that clings to Thee alone. 

And takes thy chastenings in humility. 

— Lyra Germanica. 


Nestle (379). 

God never would send you the darkness. 

If He felt you could bear the light; 

But you would not cling to His guiding hand 
If the way were always bright; 

And you would not care to walk by faith 
Could you always walk by sight. 

So He sends you the blinding darkness. 

And the furnace of sevenfold heat; 

’Tis the only way, believe me, 

To keep you close to His feet; 

For ’tis always so easy to wander 
When our lives are glad and sweet. 

Then nestle your hand in your Father’s, 

And sing, if you can, as you go; 

Your song may cheer someone behind you 
[Whose courage is sinking low. 

—The Crisis. 


190 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


God Knows (380). 

So lies my journey — on into the dark; 
Without my will I find myself alive, 

And must go forward. Is it God that draws 
Magnetic all the souls unto their Home, 
Traveling, they know not how, but unto God? 
It matters little what may come to me 

Of outward circumstance 

My life, my being, all that meaneth me, 

Goes darkling forward into something — what? 
O God, thou knowest. It is not my care. 

. . . My God, take care of me. 

Pardon and swathe me in an Infinite Love 
Pervading and inspiring me, thy child. 

And let thy own designs in me work on. 
Unfolding the ideal man in me! 


Lead me, O Father, holding by thy hand; 

I ask not whither, for it must be on. 

— George MacDonald. 


God's Answer to Man's Anguish (381). 

“The cry of man’s anguish went up unto God: 

‘Lord, take away pain — 

The shadow that darkens the world thou hast made. 

The close-coiling chain 

That strangles the heart, the burden that weighs 
On the winds that would soar; 

Lord, take away pain from the world thou hast made. 

That it love thee the more!' 

“Then answered the Lord to the cry of His world: 

‘Shall I take away pain 
And with it the power of the soul to endure. 

Made strong by the strain? 

Shall I take away pity that knits heart to heart, 

And sacrifice high? 

Will ye lose all your heroes that lift from the fire 
White brows to the sky? 

Shall I take away love that redeems with a price, 

And smiles at its loss? 

Can ye spare from your lives that would climb unto mine 
The Christ on His Cross?’” 


CHASTENING— AFFLICTION 


191 


TEXT AND TREATMENT HINTS. 

“He Rebuked the Wind# and the Sea, and There Was a Great Calm.”-r* 

Matt. 8:26 (382). 

This Redeemer and Restorer is none other than the Great Creator. 
As such He is clothed with the same mighty power. As easily and as 
effectually as He said, Let light be, and light was, He calmed the waves 
of the sea. Jesus was a few moments before — fast asleep. A waking 
man in a shipwreck may be on the watch for some means of escape. 
But a man asleep in a boat rapidly filling with water and on the point of 
going down! — such and so helpless did Jesus seem the one moment; 
and the next! He stands and speaks to the elements, and they hear 
with the facility and readiness of well-trained servants. “What manner 
of man is this! for He commandeth even the winds and water, and they 
obey Him.” — Laidlau. 

“Man Is Born To Trouble.”— Job. 5:7 (383). 

Eliphaz the Temanite was only expressing an age-long experience 
when he said, “Though affliction cometh not from the dust, neither doth 
sorrow spring out of the ground, yet man is born unto trouble as the 
sparks fly upward.” He was not a soured pessimist who said that. It 
was not the petulant wail of a disillusioned man with whom everything 
had gone wrong. It was the calm, sad verdict of one who looked the 
world in the face, and his words are as true to-day as they were three 
thousand years ago. Grief is a universal baptism — the only baptism that 
Is universal. The cup is always going round; and, at some time or 
other, in some way or other, in some measure or other, every child of 
Adam has to drink of it, and many have to drain it to the bitter dregs. 
All the world over, the chalice passes from hand to hand, from lip to 
lip— Knight. 

“Whose I Am, and Whom I serve.” — Acts 27:23 (384). 

I. Calamity teaches God’s ownership. There are other teachers of 
that lesson, but calamity is the great teacher, throwing one back upon 
first principles. 

There are two shipwrecks in the Bible, those of Jonah and Paul. 
They are very unlike, but alike they emphasize God’s ownership. Jonah 
is trying to run away from God, but it can not be done, and he gives up 
and bids the sailors throw him overboard. Paul is being carried a 
prisoner to Rome, but he is upheld by knowing that he belongs to God. 
Calamity which beats Jonah down into submission lifts Paul up into 
confidence in Him whose he is. 

II. It is good to know that we are God’s. Even Jonah, in his despair, 
rises to great dignity, confessing his sin and bidding the shipmen throw 
him into the sea. Paul rises to a noble mastery of the situation. 

III. We need to add our own act of service to God’s ownership. — 
Homiletic Review. 


192 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


“A Refiner’s Fire.”— Malachl 3:2 (385). 

I. It is He who permits the trial. — The evil thing may originate in 
the malignity of a Judas; but by the time it reaches us it has become 
the cup which our Father has given us to drink. The waster may pur- 
pose his own lawless and destructive work; but he cannot go an inch 
beyond the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God. Satan him- 
self must ask permission ere he touches a hair of the patriarch’s head. 
(Job 1:8-12.) The point up to which we may be tested is fixed by con- 
summate wisdom. The weapon may hurt and the fire sting; but they 
are in the hands which redeemed us. Nothing can befall us without 
God’s permission, and His permissions are His appointments. We cannot 
be the sport of blind fate or chance; for in trial we are still in the hands 
of the living Saviour. 

II. It is He who superintends the trial. — No earthly friend may be 
near; but in every furnace there is One like the Son of Man. In every 
flood of high waters He stands beside us — staying the heart with prom- 
ises, instilling words of faith and hope, recalling the blessed past, point- 
ing to the radiant future, hushing fear, as once He stilled the dismay of 
His disciples on the lake: such is the ministry of Jesus. And as the 
sufferer looks back on the trial, he says, “I never felt Him so near be- 
fore; and if it had not been for what He was to me, I could never have 
lived through it.” 

III. It is He who watches the progress of the trial. — No mother 
bending over her suffering child is more solicitious than is He — suiting 
the trial to your strength — keeping his finger on your pulse so as to stay 
the flame when the heart begins to flutter — only too eager to see the 
scum pass off, and his own face reflected from the face of the molten 
metal. — Meyer. 

“Let This Cup Pass From Me.”— Matt. 26:39 (386). 

Many prayers are heard which are answered, not by lightening the 
burden, but by strengthening the bearer. Every one is brought at some 
time to cry in an agony, “Anything but this. Can it be that good can 
come out of this? Is it possible that this should be the best thing that 
can happen to me — this calamity with its hopeless desolation, its crush- 
ing misery, its ruthless extinguishing of schemes of usefulness, its hu- 
miliating reminders of past sins? Can this be that which I am to enter 
into and pass through?” What can we do but take up the prayer of our 
Lord, and say, “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me?” 
But in Christ’s case this prayer was heard by a love which c^uld choose 
for Him the greater blessedness which came by drinking the cup. To 
have spared Christ the suffering would have been to answer His prayer 
in appearance, but to disregard the deeper cravings of His spirit. Can 
any one suppose that if Christ had received the actual exemption from 
suffering He prayed for, it would have been a greater kindness on God’s 
part than the kindness He showed in allowing the suffering to continue, 
and to work its grand effect in the salvation of the world? 


CHASTENING— AFFLICTION 


393 


And so in a measure is it with ourselves. Our cry of agony is not 
coldly put by; our heartbroken prayer is not disregarded. Far from it. 
God knows what we suffer, and feels with us; our pains pain His father- 
ly heart; but He knows that these pains are passing ,and that, when 
meekly and hopefully borne, they work for us a deeper joy and a fuller 
life. It is dreadful, indeed, to see the thing we fear drawing nearer day 
by day, marching irresistibly onwards over all cryings and entreaties we 
make, trampling apparently on our bleeding heart, and leaving a track 
of desolated hopes and apparently disregarded prayers; but by the very 
anguish we suffer we may measure the greatness of the end to be 
wrought by it, and the intensity of the joy with which God will com- 
pensate us. — Marcus Dods. 


“When I Bring a Cloud the Bow Shall Be Seen.” — Gen. 9:14 (387). 

The rainbow is one of the most beautiful things God ever made, and 
His causing it to shine out on Noah just when his apprehension of 
further judgment was filling him with fear was one of the most beauti- 
ful things God ever did. The tender thoughtfulness of that sign of 
mercy comforted Noah, and it has comforted thousands since. It was 
in a beautifully human way, too, that God spoke of it: “When I bring 
a cloud over the earth, the bow shall be seen in the cloud, and I will 
look upon it, and remember my covenant.” God’s eyes and our eyes 
looking on the same thing at the same moment — that is a beautiful 
thought; but there is a more comforting one still, that He sees the bow 
where our weak and blind eyes do not see it at all. — Knight. 


Blessed Are They That Mourn; for They Shall Be Comforted.” — Matt. 

5:4 (388). 

The Master, when He said this, was fulfilling the prophecy, — “He 
hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted” (Isaiah 61:1). He was 
speaking in the same line as when he said, “Come unto me, all ye that 
labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” (Matt. 11:28.) 

The words reach beyond the mourners simply over sin. They indeed 
are blessed in their consciousness of pardon and safety, but there is more 
than that here. He, the infinite Saviour, came to bring the kingdom of 
heaven, God’s reign in the soul. That is a kingdom of peace. The be- 
liever comes to Him and is blessed in the coming. He comes with his 
heart borne down with earthly sorrow. Where else, to whom else in all 
the world can he go? Earth cannot help him. He comes to a sympa- 
thizing Saviour (Heb. 4:15), and he is in a place of calm. He hardly 
knows why or how, but peace and rest are in his heart, and they are 
blessedness. 

That is for to-day. But the “shall be” looks forward to a time when 
God shall wipe all tears away (Isaiah 25:8; Rev. 7:17; 21:4). The an- 
ticipation of future blessedness touches and lightens the present sor- 
row. — William Aikman, D. D. 


194 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


“Ye Ha''e Need of Patience, That After Ye Have Done the Will of God, 
Ye May Receive the Promise.” — Heb. 10:36 (389). 

I. The patience needed is patience to live. “If life be long,” said 
Richard Baxter, “I will be glad, that I may long obey,” though he added, 
“If life be short, can I be sad to soar to endless day?” That is the 
noblest Christian attitude. To take lengthened suffering as an extended 
opportunity of glorifying God by calm acceptance of His will is infinitely 
better than to long faint-heartedly for release. 

II. There are always sufficient reasons, both on His side and on 
our own, for any postponement of the home-call. Some of His best- 
loved children have so hard a lot, and such a warfare too with their im- 
perfectly-sanctified natures, that it seems as if the greatest blessing He 
could give them would be just immediate release from all the suffering 
and all the sin; and often the words are uttered in paroxysms of un- 
bearable pain — have we not often heard them? — “Oh, come, Lord Jesus, 
come quickly!” But what if the last fine touches have yet to be put 
to God’s great work of reproducing the Christlikeness in the soul?” — 
Knight. 

Now for a little while, if need be, ye have been put to grief in manifold 
temptations, that the proof of your faith, being more precious than, 
gold that perisheth, though it is proved by fire, might be found unto 
praise and glory and honour at the revelation of Jesus Christ.— 
I Pet. 1:6, 7 (390). 

1. Worldly fortune is not the highest end of life. “Faith, being 
more precious than gold that perisheth.” There is, then, something more 
precious than gold, and that something is faithful or noble character. 
We may attain wealth, renown, and whatever else is embraced in the 
worldly conception of success, yet miss the main prize. And thousands 
of successful men are conscious that they have missed it, missed the 
centre lily whilst they gained the chickweed round the fringe. Let us 
dare to maintain, and that in the face of all mockers, that the fine quali- 
ties of the Christian character outshine in worth all flowers of pleasure, 
stars of honour, or sheen of gold. 

2. That the supreme end of life, the perfection of character, is 
sometimes best attained through vicissitude and tribulation. “Now for 
a little while, if need be, ye have been put to grief in manifold temp- 
tations,” that ye might be perfected, as gold tried in the fire is purified; 
and so ultimately be found clothed with eternal beauty, fitted for high 
ministries, undimmed by shadow of failure. Few pains are keener than 
the sense of failure, and through this acutest of distresses duly sancti- 
fied our being reaches its finest attributes. A large part of the campos of 
Central Brazil is burnt every year at the end of the dry season; but as 
the vegetation is scanty the fires pass quickly onwards, and do not ap- 
pear to injure the trees and plants. Indeed, botanists believe that the 
vegetation benefits by the burning. As soon as the rains come, the 
scorched plants produce foliage earlier than where there has been no 


CHASTENING— AFFLICTION 


195 


fire, and often produce flowers whelu unburnt trees or shrubs of the same 
species remain flowerless. How often in the vineyard of God, where the 
flame of calamity has left a trail of loss and blight, springs the very 
pride of the garden. — Waterman. 

“A Very Present Help In Time of Trouble" (391). 

You are passing through a time of deep sorrow. The love on which 
you were trusting has suddenly failed you, and dried up like a brook in 
the desert — now a dwindling stream, then shallow pools, and at last 
drought. You are always listening for footsteps that do not come, wait- 
ing for a word that is not spoken, pining for a reply that tarries overdue. 

At such times life seems almost unsupportable. Will every day be 
as long as this? Will the slow-moving hours ever again quicken their 
pace? Will life ever array itself in another garb than the torn autumn 
remnants of past summer glory? Hath God forgotten to be gracious? 
Hath He in anger shut up His tender mercies? Is His mercy clean gone 
forever? 

I. This road has been trodden by myriads. — When you think of the 
desolating wars which have swept through every country and devastated 
every land; of the expeditions of the Nimrods, the Nebuchadnezzars, the 
Timours, the Napoleons of history; of the merciless slave trade, which 
has never ceased to decimate Africa; and of all the tyranny, the oppres- 
sion, the wrong which the weak and defenceless have suffered at the 
hands of their fellows; of the unutterable sorrows of women and chil- 
dren — surely you must see that by far the larger number of our race 
have passed through the same bitter griefs as those which rend your 
heart. 

Jesus Christ Himself trod this difficult path, leaving traces of His 
blood on its flints; and apostles, prophets, confessors, and martyrs have 
passed by the same way. It is comforting to know that others have 
traversed the same dark valley, and that the great multitudes which 
stand before the Lamb, wearing palms of victory, came out of great trib- 
ulation. Where they were we are; and, by God’s grace, where they are 
we shall be. 

II. Sorrow is a refiner’s crucible. — It may be caused by the neglect 
or cruelty of another, by circumstances over which the sufferer has no 
control, or as the direct result of some dark hour in the long past; but 
Inasmuch as God has permitted it to come, it must be accepted as His 
appointment, and considered as the furnace by which He is searching, 
testing, probing, and purifying the soul. Suffering searches us as fire 
does metals. We think we are fully for God, until we are exposed to 
the cleansing fire of pain. Then we discover, as Job did, how much 
dross there is in us, and how little real patience, resignation, and faith. 
Nothing so detaches us from the things of this world. 

III. But God always keeps the discipline of sorrow in His own hands. 
— Our Lord said, “My Father is the husbandman.” His hand holds the 
pruning knife. His eye watches the crucible. His gentle touch is on 
the pulse while the operation is in progress. He will not allow even the 


196 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


devil to have his own way with us. As in the case of Job, so always. 
The moments are carefully allotted. The severity of the test is exactly 
determined by the reserves of grace and strength which are lying unrec- 
ognized within, but will be sought for and used beneath the severe 
pressure of pain. He holds the winds in His fist, and the waters in the 
hollow of His hand. He dare not risk the loss of that which has cost 
Him the blood of His son. “God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be 
tried above that you are able.” 

IV. In sorrow the Comforter is near. — “Very present in time of trou- 
ble.” He sits by the crucible, as a Refiner of silver, regulating the heat, 
marking every change, waiting patiently for the scum to float away, and 
His own face to be mirrored in clear, translucent metal. No earthly 
friend may tread the winepress with you, but the Savior is there. — Rev. 
F. B. Meyer. 


VIII. RESIGNATION— TRUST 


REFLECTIONS AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 

A Ray of Light (392). 

There pierces through the shadow of the great disaster in the St. 
Paul Mine, at Cherry, 111., a ray of light which is full of inspiration — a 
tale of heroism and faith the world can pay much to have. In this day 
of disbelief, of iconoclastic fads and moral rebellion, we can read the 
story of Clelland, the simple Scotch Covenanter, and be the better for it. 

He, with nineteen others, found themselves entombed in the deadly 
mine, the fire sweeping nearer and the poisonous gases becoming more 
and more impossible to endure. He never hesitated. Strong in the faith 
of his fathers, and trustful of the goodness and mercy of the Supreme 
Being he had been taught to worship, he took no thought of human aid, 
but said: “We are in God’s hands. He only knows whether we shall 
ever see our wives and children again. Let us pray.” There in that dark 
hole, from which there seemed to be no hope of exit, these twenty simple- 
minded men — among them Italians and Lithuanians — knelt while Clel- 
land held his glowing torch in his hand, and repeated the words of David: 
“Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice: 
neither let not the deep swallow me up, and let not the pit shut her mouth 
upon me.” 

And when the prayer was ended, Clelland led them in song: 

“O God, our help in ages past. 

Our hope for years to come, 

Our shelter from the stormy blast. 

And our eternal home! 

“Under the shadow of thy throne 
Still may we dwell secure; 

Sufficient is thine arm alone, 

And our defense is sure.” 

Cheered even in the depth of their despair by the trusting faith of 
this one man, his prayers, his song, and assimilating in some myster- 
ious way that faith, these men once more took thought for their safety, 
sure that God would aid them. For hours they toiled, their food gone, 
sustaining life merely by drinking the water which settled on the damp 
floor of the mine, building a barrier against the destruction which was 
sweeping toward them. The hours followed on one another with terrible 
slowness. Days passed; but in that living death and dark, dank hole, it 
was Clelland’s cheerful voice, his supreme trust, that held their hearts 
attuned to the Infinite, and their courage undismayed. They sang, Clel- 
land leading, until all had learned the words and the tune: 


198 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


“Abide with me! Fast falls the eventide, 

The darkness deepens — Lord, with me abide! 

When other helpers fail, and comforts flee, 

Help of the helpless, O abide with me! 

“Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day; 

Earth’s joys grow dim, its glories pass away; 

Change and decay in all around I see; 

O thou, who changest not, abide with me!” 

Their throats were parched, their tongues stiff, and their voices 
weak; but through the long hours they with Clelland, sang and prayed: 

“Help of the helpless, O abide with me!” 

Never, perhaps, had the words been so fraught with meaning; never 
had those uttering them clung so tenaciously to them. 

“Abide with me! Fast falls the eventide.” 

Then through the wall of earth, the rocks and barricade went up the sol- 
emn prayers to that God in whom they trusted; and He, as in the days 
of old, heard and answered. Their perfect faith had made them whole 
again. — Selected. 

God is Life. (393)- -Take your life out of the body, and a dead 
thing lies upon a slab of marble. Take God out of our earth, and this 
earth is a corpse, laid out by sable night and eternity. 

Lying at His Feet (394). 

As soon as we lay ourselves entirely at His feet, we have enough 
light given us to guide our own steps; as the foot soldier, who hears 
nothing of the councils that determine the course of the great battle he 
is in, hears plainly enough the word of command which he must himself 
obey. — George Eliot. 

Whom I Believe (395). 

When Dr. Alexander, one of the professors of theology in Princeton 
University, was dying, he was visited by a former student. After briefly 
exchanging two or three questions as to health, the dying professor re- 
quested his old student to recite a verse of the Bible to be a comfort to 
him in his death-struggle. After a moment’s reflection the student re- 
peated from memory the verse of Paul to Timothy — “I know in whom I 
have believed, and that He is able to keep that which I have committed 
unto Him unto that day.” 

“No, no,” replied the dying saint, “that is not the verse; it is not 
‘I know in whom I have believed,’ but ‘I know whom I have believed.’ 
I cannot allow the little word ‘in’ to intervene between me and my Sav- 
ior to-day I cannot allow the smallest word in the English language 
to go between me and my Savior in the floods of Jordan.” — Banks, 


RESIGNATION— TRUST 


199 


“Turned Lessons'" (396). 

In suffering and sorrow God touches the minor chords, develops the 
passive virtues, and opens to view the treasures of darkness, the con- 
stellations of promise, the rainbow of hope, the silver light of the cove- 
nant. What is character without sympathy, submission, patience, trust, 
and hope that grips the unseen as an anchor? But these graces are only 
possible through sorrow. Sorrow is a garden, the trees of which are 
laden with the peaceable fruits of righteousness; do not leave it without 
bringing them with you. Sorrow is a mine, the walls of which glisten 
with precious stones; be sure and do not retrace your steps into day- 
light without some specimens. Sorrow is a school. You are sent to sit 
on its hard benches and learn from its black-lettered pages lessons 
which will make you wise forever; do not trifle away your chance of 
graduating there. Miss Havergal used to talk of “turned leassons.” — 
Meyer. 


He Feared the Gate (397). 

Late one stormy evening the old doctor was summoned to see a man 
who had been attacked with a sudden illness. The patient proved to be 
“Squire” Joyce, whom the doctor slightly knew. He examined him care- 
fully, and gave him medicine. Then he arose to go, smiling cheerfully 
dow r n at the anxious face of the sufferer. 

“You will find yourself better in the morning, I hope,” he said. 

“Yes. Stay a minute, doctor. I want you to be honest with me. I 
have had seizures like this before. Shall I have them again?” 

“It is probable.” 

“I want the truth — all of it.” 

“Yes, they will return.” 

“I may die in one of them — to-morrow?” 

“Yes. Or maybe, not for years. It is uncertain. Do not waste 
your life in anticipating them. We all must go through the same gate 
some day.” 

“The gate — yes! But beyond the gate — what is there?” 

His eyes were on the doctor’s face, full of doubt, almost pain. 

The two men were silent a moment. “What is there?” Joyce re- 
peated harshly. “You are a member of a church — a Christian. I have 
no religious belief. Tell me, for the love of God, what is there beyond? 
If I may go tomorrow, what shall I find?” 

‘T do not know.” 

Joyce did not speak for a while, and then gave a forced laugh. 
“I need your help more for this than for my disease. I’d rather talk to 
you than a clergyman. You are a shrewd man of the world, and a good 
man. Sometimes I am greatly depressed, thinking of the darkness into 
which I am going. For thousands of years men have gone into it, 
leaving loved ones behind, and not one has sent back a word to say how 
it fares with him — not one.” 

“You are an old man, doctor,” said Joyce, turning to him. “You are 
not far from the gate yourself. Are you not afraid of what may be 
beyond?” 


200 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


“No,” said the doctor. “No, I am not afraid. Look here.” Ho 
rose and opened the door. Outside, in the dark hall, lay a little fox- 
terrier, drenched with rain. He was crouched on the floor, his eyes 
fixed on the closed door. 

“This is my dog. He has followed me through the storm, and has 
been lying outside the door, knowing that I was within this chamber. 
He never was here before. He did not know what was in this room. 
He did not care to know. I was in it, his master, whom he loves. He 
was not afraid.” 

Joyce looked at the doctor keenly a moment before he spoke — 

“You mean — ” 

“I mean that I am like poor Punch. I am not afraid of the dark 
room to which I am going. I do not ask to know what is there. All 
these years He has cared for me. I have been assured that in my hours 
of trial He has never failed me here. I sincerely believe He will not 
fail me yonder.” 

“But — I do not know Him.” 

“He knows you. I am authorized by the declarations of the Bible 
to say that His hand is stretched out to you. You can accept Him as 
your Guide and Teacher if you will. That done in sincerity, you will not 
fear the gate nor all that lies beyond.” — Selected. 

The Song of Trust (398). 

Like the bird, which after many days of darkness and many days of 
singing itself again into the light, finds its little voice grown strong and 
sure, we who sing on through our trials and burdening shall some morn- 
ing find our own voices sweetened and greatened from the long practice. 
The wavering note becomes steady, the harsh tone gently clear. Then 
do we know, O men and women, that the shadows of this world are sent 
but to train the weak voices and fit them for their places in the choir 
invisible. 


“Of those immortal dead who live again 
In minds made better by their presence: live 
In pulses stirred to generosity, 

In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn 
For miserable aims that end with self, 

In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars. 

And with their mild persistence urge man’s search 
To vaster issues.” — From “The Great Optimist.” 

Feeling or Willing Resignation (399). 

To bear sorrow with dry eyes and stolid heart may befit a Stoic, 
but not a Christian. We have no need to rebuke fond nature crying for 
its mate, its lost joy, the touch of the vanished hand, the sound of the 
voice that is still, provided only that the will is resigned. This is the 
one consideration for those who suffer — Is the will right? If it isn’t, 
God Himself cannot comfort. If it is, then the path will inevitably lead 
from the valley of the shadow of death to the banqueting table and the 
overflowing cup. 


RESIGNATION— TRUST 


201 


Many say: “I cannot feel resigned. It is bad enough to have my 
grief to bear, but I have this added trouble, that I cannot feel resigned.” 

My invariable reply is: “You probably never can feel resignation, 
but you can will it.” 

The Lord Jesus, in the Garden of Gethsemane, has shown us how 
to suffer. He chose His Father’s will. Though Judas, prompted by 
Satan, was the instrument for mixing the cup and placing it to the 
Savior’s lips, He looked right beyond him to the Father, who permitted 
him to work his cruel way, and said: “The cup that My Father giveth 
Me to drink, shall I not drink it?” And he said repeatedly, “If this 
cup may not pass from Me, except I drink it, Thy will be done.” He 
gave up His own way and will, saying, “I will Thy will, O My Father. 
Thy will, and not Mine, be done.” — Meyer. 

Father Will Meet Me (400). 

I left Cheyenne, Wyo., one morning on the “overland flyer,” for 
Omaha. The ride as far as Kearney is through a dreary, desolate coun- 
try of sand knolls, prairie dog towns, barren hills, waterless valleys 
and dry streams. In the seat ahead sat a little boy, intently gazing 
upon the monotonous landscape. Dinner was taken in the diner. A 
social chat enlivened the weary hours. Still this little fellow sat there 
peering through the window. About the middle of the afternoon I 
spoke to him. 

“My little man,” said I, “aren’t you tired?” 

“Not much,” came the quiet reply. 

“Well, aren’t you hungry?” I asked. The little fellow, looking up 
at me with a smile, replied: 

“Yes, a little; but you see, papa is going to meet me at Grand 
Island.” 

Friend, what a lesson there is there for you and me. We are being 
carried along through life’s journey at sixty heartbeats a minute. Our 
ticket is purchased for the through train with no stopover privileges. 
Why should we sit and grumble if the way be dreary at times? Why 
should we be complaining because life at times may seem monotonous? 
Let us remember that a Father is waiting to welcome us at the other 
end. Lisp a short prayer for the day as you climb out of your sleeping 
berth. The whistle will soon blow for the terminal, where friends are 
waiting to meet you. You are going this way only once, go it right. 

“I Am” (401). 

Are you a disciple of the Lord Jesus? If so, he says to you, “I am 
with you alway.” That overflows all the regrets of the past and all the 
possibilities of the future, and most certainly includes the present. 
Therefore, at this very moment, as surely as your eyes rest upon this 
page, so surely is the Lord Jesus with you. “I am” is neither 
“I was,” nor “I will be.” It is always abreast of our lives, always en- 
compassing us with salvation. It is a splendid, perpetual “now.” — • 
Frances Ridley Havergal. 


202 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


A Steadfast Trust (402). 

A chain, a girder, a pillar are not calculated for ordinary but for 
exceptional strain. A great faith in God, a steadfast trust in Him who 
died for us and whose death is the price of our peace, a love that 
many waters cannot quench nor the floods drown, a hope that is practi- 
cally infinite — in these great qualities, convictions and expectations 
lies the solution of the problem of life’s desperate situations. — W. L. 
Watkinson. 

Confidence in God (403). 

The secret of a happy life is confidence in a gracious Heavenly 
Father. Two hoys were talking together of Elijah’s ascent in the 
chariot of fire. Said one: “Wouldn’t you be afraid to ride in such a 
chariot?’’ “No,” said the other, “not if God drove!” God drives the 
chariot of every human life. So fear not, but believe and hope, for 
His power and love are omnipotent. 

Patience (404). 

Let us only be patient; and let God our Father teach His own 
lesson in His own way. Let us try to learn it well and learn it quickly; 
but do not let us fancy that He will ring the school bell and send us 
to play before our lesson is learned. — Kingsley. 

Faith's Anticipations (405). 

The larva of the male stag-beetle, said Dr. Christlieb, when it be- 
comes a chrysalis constructs a larger case than it needs to contain its 
curled-up body, in order that the horns which will presently grow, may 
find room. What does the larva know of its future form of existence? 
And yet it arranges its house with a view to it! Is it then to be sup- 
posed that the same Power which created both the beetle and the man 
instilled into the beetle a true instinct and into the man a lying faith? 

Two Golden Days (406). 

There are two days in the week upon which and about which I 
never worry. Two care-free days, kept sacredly free from fear and 
apprehension. 

One of these days is yesterday. Yesterday, with all its cares and 
frets, with all its pains and aches, all its faults, its mistakes and 
blunders, has passed forever beyond the reach of my recall. I cannot 
undo an act that I wrought, I cannot unsay a word that I said on 
yesterday. All that it holds of my life, of wrong, regret, and sorrow is 
in the hand of the Mighty Love that can bring honey out of the rock 
and sweet waters out of the bitterest desert — the love that can make the 
wrong things right, that can turn weeping into laughter, that can give 
beauty for ashes, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, 
joy of the morning for the woe of the night. 

Save for the beautiful memories, sweet and tender, that linger like 
the perfume of roses in the heart of the day that is gone, I have nothing 
to do with yesterday. It was mine; it is God’s. 


RESIGNATION— TRUST 


203 


And the other day I do not worry about is tomorrow. Tomorrow, 
with all its possible adversities, its burdens, its perils, its large promise 
and poor performance, its failures and mistakes, is as far beyond the 
reach of my mastery as its dead sister, yesterday. It is a day of God’s. 
Its sun will rise in roseate splendor on a new day of grace. All else is in 
the safe keeping of the Infinite Love that holds for me the treasures or 
yesterday — the love that is higher than the stars, wider than the skies, 
deeper than the seas. To-morrow — it is God’s day. It will be mine. 

There is left for myself, then, but one day of the week — to-day. Any 
man can fight the battles of to-day. Any woman can carry the burdens 
of just one day. Any man can resist the temptations of to-day. 


Thy Will Be Done (407). 

A Christian lady was once explaining to a friend how impossible 
she found it to say, “Thy will be done,” and how afraid she should be to 
do it. She was the mother of one little boy, who was the heir to a 
great fortune, and the idol of her heart. After she had stated her diffi- 
culties fully, her friend said: “Suppose your little Charley should come 
running to you to-morrow and say, ‘Mother, I have made up my mind to 
let you have your own way with me from this time forward. I am 
always going to obey you, and I want you to do just whatever you think 
best with me. I will trust to your love/ How would you feel toward 
him? Would you say to yourseif, ‘Ah, now I shall have a chance to 
make Charley miserable. I will take away all his pleasures, and fill 
his life with every hard and disagreeable thing that I can find. I will 
compel him to do just the things that are the most difficult to do, and will 
give him all sorts of impossible commands/” “Oh, no, no, no!” ex- 
claimed the indignant mother. “You know I would not. You know I 
would hug him to my heart and cover him with kisses, and would hasten 
to fill his life with all the sweetest and best.” “And are you more 
tender and more loving than God?” asked her friend. “Ah, no,” was 
the reply, “I see my mistake, and I will not be any more afraid of 
saying, ‘Thy will be done/ to my Heavenly Father than I would want 
my Charley to be of saying it to me.” — The Christian’s Secret of a Happy 
Life. 

Be Patient (408). 

Patience cannot be cultivated in a short time. It requires years for 
some of God’s children to bring this grace to that perfection attainable 
in this life. “Let patience have her perfect work.” The husbandman 
waiting for the precious fruit and grain, gives nature the opportunity to 
do her full work. “Add to your faith patience.” “Run with patience 
the course set before us,” if needs must be — willing to pass through 
“tribulation which worketh patience.” 

The Christian’s life is especially planned and watched over by the 
Infinite One. Let us therefore be patient and wait. In the realm of 
Providence, 


204 THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 

"God’s plans like lilies pure and white unfold: 

We must not tear the close shut leaves apart, 

Time will reveal the calyxes of gold." 

"Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him." 

His Hope (409). 

When John Knox lay dying, his friend asked him, "Hast thou hope?" 
He spoke nothing, but raised his finger and pointed upward, and so 
he died. 


The Father’s Grip (410). 

There is a simple child’s story which always seems to me to con- 
vey a profound and too often forgotten truth. It is the tale of the boy 
who, with his father, was climbing some steep and dangerous place, 
and to whom a voice from below suddenly called up: "Have you fast 
hold of your father?" "No!" was the immediate answer; "but he has 
fast hold of me.” That is the first, the main thing — not the sense of our 
keeping hold of God — if that were all, how weak, how ready to fall 
we all should be — hut rather the sense that our Heavenly Father has 
hold of us, and that because is greater than all, no one is able to 
pluck us out of His hand. 

"And so I go on, not knowing. 

I would not, if I might. 

I would rather walk in the dark with God, 

Than walk alone in the light. 

I would rather walk with God by faith, 

Than walk alone by sight.” 

It is the Lord, who made heaven and earth, who will bless and 
keep us.— George Milligan, D. D. 

Resignation (411). 

May you never know the sorrow so crushing, the loss so charged 
with agony, that your devout will cannot make your own the will that 
governs the universe, and pray with the deepest fervor, from the midst 
of blinding tears, Thy will be done! 

But the mistake is in supposing that it is the prayer for such times 
and such trials alone, in supposing, indeed, that this is first and chiefly 
a prayer in these experiences of affliction and loss. Consider the words 
of the petition as our Lord teaches them to us: Thy will be done, as in 
heaven, so on earth — as in heaven, where is no blight nor sorrow nor 
bitter grief, where there shall be pain and sighing no more, and where 
God shall wipe the tears from every eye. There, where there is no resig- 
nation and no submission, and no sad endurance of unavoidable ills 
because there is no trouble there — God’s will is done, and our prayer 
is that it may be accomplished, as in heaven, so on earth. Let the 
tried and suffering heart pray this prayer in the depth of mortal pain, 
but also, let us pray it as devoutly when life runs riotously in our veins 
and all the joy of the world is coursing in our blood. — Aked. 


RESIGNATION— TRUST 


205 


No Unpermitted Showers (412). 

All providences are doors to trials. Even our mercies, like roses, 
have their thorns. Our mountains are not too high, and our valleys are 
not too low, for temptations; trials lurk on all roads. Everywhere, 
above and beneath, we are beset and surrounded with dangers. Yet 
no shower falls unpermitted from the threatening cloud; every drop 
has its order ere it hastens to the earth. The trials which come from 
God are sent to prove and strengthen us. — C. H. Spurgeon. 

“Pm All Right” (413). 

A recent writer tells how there lived near him a fine old Scotchman. 
Time had shortened his steps. His hair was silvery white. His shoulders 
were bent, and he was sorely drawn out of shape by rheumatism. But 
when his friend hailed him with “How are you today, grandfather?” 
there came back the cheery words: “Oh! I am all right. My old body 
has gi’n oot, but I’m all right.” The body was falling to pieces, like an 
old house, but the faithful old man was being preserved with all the 
beautiful graces of the Christian life blossoming with sweeter fragrance 
as he neared the heavenly climate. 

So long His power has blessed me, sure it still 
Will lead me on 

O’er moor and fen, o’er crag and torrent, till 
The night is gone. 

At Eventide (414). 

I love to connect our word “serene” with the Latin word for evening, 
as well as with its own mother-word “serenus” — clear, or bright. 

Often, after a windy, stormy day, there comes at evening a clear, 
bright stillness, so that at evening time there is serenity as well as 
light. So often in life’s evening there comes a lull, a time of peaceful 
waiting “between the lights,” the burden-weighted heat of the day 
behind, the radiance of eternity before. Perhaps the day has been in truth 
“life’s little day,” swiftly ebbing to its close; perhaps the worn, tired 
pilgrim has lived even beyond the measure of three score years and 
ten. In either case it is in truth the evening. 

The dear face reflects “eternity’s wonderful beauty,” the sweet, 
serene spirit is freshened by dew from the heavenly Hermon, the fra- 
grance of evening flowers fills the air, the songs of birds come in tender, 
satisfied cadences, and even the clouds which remain are enriched and 
made radiant by rays from the Sun of righteousness. 

We whose evening is not yet, are entranced with the exquisite 
blending of the warm human affection with the celestial flame kindled 
from the sacred altar. With hushed souls we minister and are min- 
istered unto, until, too soon, the twilight time is past, and the evening 
and the morning have become the eternal day. — Christian Observer. 

The Silver Lining (415). — “Get into the habit of looking for the sil- 
ver lining of the cloud, and, when you have found it, continue to look 
at it rather than at the leaden gray in the middle. It will help you 
over many hard places.” 


206 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


The Dark Days (416). 

It is so human to cry out in dismay when we are frightened by 
the blackness that settles over our lives as the clouds of trouble and 
of pain are pasing over them. Human to believe for a time that they 
are too dense ever to break away and let the sunshine through. So 
human to try to find somone else at fault and not our own mistakes, 
our sins, or our almost inexcusable ignorance. So human to forget 
that we have been Christ-warned again and again of the way that is 
pain-haunted, where the ghosts of our wrong thinking and careless 
living stand guard and will not allow us to forget how much we have 
lost of joy and gathered of sorrow, that need never have been. 

These memories are so large a part of our everyday life that they 
cannot be separated from the “everyday sorrows,” and the heaviest 
sorrows that have ever been borne by human hearts have not been be- 
cause God willed them, but because somehow they grew out of sinfulness 
or ignorance, -and instead of being classed as an unusual one, it belongs 
alone to the one soul and God, who sorrows with it. 

There is always strength for what God puts in our way, always 
the “Comforter” to share the natural, unavoidable griefs of our every- 
day lives. God never wills us any condition that needs to crush out 
all joy in life. His compensations are commensurate to every trial that 
comes to us through unavoidable causes or natural processes. It is 
only when we pass away beyond, and defy His will by going our own 
foolish way, that we find the bottomless abyss of pain, the full meaning 
of uncomforted sorrow. We must keep close, with our eyes on Him 
while we walk the waves, or, like Peter, we will find ourselves sinking 
beyond our depth. But even on the stormiest sea we may always be 
safe if we are going toward the Christ’s outstretched hand. Remember 
you need only to hold fast to that hand to bear your “everyday sorrow,” 
for He knows all about it, wept with other mourners, then comforted 
them and helped them to bear, and so He will help you if you will give 
Him the chance Peter gave Him on the sea, but of how many of His 
doubting, distressed children He can say: “How often would I, but ye 
would not.” 

“The way is long, my child, but it shall be 
Not one step longer than is best for thee, 

And thou shalt know at last, when thou shalt stand 
Close to the gate, how I did take thy hand, 

And quick and straight led thee to heaven’s gate, my child!” 

— Burlington Hawkeye. 

A Song in the Night (417). 

Seven men were buried beneath thousands of tons of rock which fell 
without a moment’s warning in a Cornish tin mine. Willing hands soon 
began the work of rescue, though all despaired of finding any one alive. 
Their worst fears were not quite realized. One man was found, and was 
removed from his comrades uninjured, the rocks having formed an arch 
over him. 


RESIGNATION— TRUST 


207 


After two days the men who w r ere at work, having been greatly en- 
couraged by finding one man alive, called very loudly to ascertain 
whether others were alive and could speak. One man answered. He was 
an active Christian, a Sunday School superintendent. 

“Are you alone?” asked some one. 

No; Christ is with me,” was the answer. 

Are you injured?” was the next question. 

Yes,” replied the imprisoned man; “my legs are held fast by 
something.” Then in a feeble voice he sang: 

“Abide with me! Fast falls the eventide, 

The darkness deepens — Lord, with me abide! 

When other helpers fail, and comforts flee, 

Help of the helpless, O abide with me!” 

They heard no more from him. Two days later they found him 
with his legs crushed by a huge rock which rested on them, but it was 
known from his life and last words that he had gone to be “forever with 
the Lord.” 

When he was buried his funeral was attended by hundreds of 
people. According to the local custom, they carried the casket through 
the streets with their hands; and on the way to the cemetery and also 
at the graveside his favorite hymns were sung. All were weeping as 
they finally sang the hymn which was last upon his lips, “Abide with 
me;” and many felt the desire of their own hearts expressed in the 
words: “In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.” — Kind words. . 

The Source of Resignation (418). 

The supreme source of resignation and comfort in suffering and 
sorrow is trust in the loving heavenly Father, the Father of mercies 
and God of all comfort, who is revealed in the Scriptures and especially 
in the character and the sufferings of Jesus the Christ. An inward 
assurance of filial relationship to God is an unfailing support in trouble 
of very sort and every degree. To know that God himself heals all 
our sorrows, and is the tender and sympathizing companion of our 
loneliness, and that He will cause all calamities as well as all blessings 
to work together for our good, makes us victorious in the hour of agony. 
— Selected. 


My Heavenly Home (419). 

There is no power in death, even though it come cruelly and harshly,' 
to destroy this peace. Stephen in the hour of death had the face of an 
angel, and had comforting visions of his ascended Lord. The stones 
of the mob, and even the gnashing on him of their teeth, had no power 
to shut out the glories revealed to him. 

On January 10th, 1860, the Pemberton mill, a large cotton factory 
at Lawrence, Mass., suddenly fell into ruins, burying the operatives in 
the debris. Some were rescued alive; others would have been, but a 


208 THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


broken lantern set the ruins on fire and the rescuers were driven from 
their work. As they turned away, they distinctly heard some imprisoned 
girls who had been brought up in the Sunday School singing that pre- 
cious hymn of William Hunter’s — 


“My heavenly home is bright and fair.” 


And up from the flaming jaws of death there came the brave 
chorus, — ' 


“I’m going home to die no more.” 


— Banks. 


Help to Bear (420). 

In a short story in Harper’s Magazine, entitled “An Angel in the k 
House,” Harriet Prescott Spofford has told about a woman who suddenly 
became blind in her old age. Quickly her prayer came, “Oh, our Heaven- 
ly Father, come to us with Thy Spirit. Help us to be willin’. Be with 
us in the dark: — oh, be with us in the dark!” 

With her husband, whose heart is breaking under the affliction, she 
visits the oculist, who gently tells her that nothing but a miracle can 
bring back her lost sight, “And the days of miracles are gone,” he adds. 

“No,” she said quietly, “it may not be worth while for me. But the 
Power that made this world must still be living in it,” 

“And can transcend law? I wish it could and would.” 

“Perhaps not that way,” she answered with a lovely dignity. “But 
by cornin’ to me — and helpin’ me to bear. By comfortin’ him,” for he 
had dropped his head in her lap and was crying like a child. “Dear, it 
is the Lord’s will;” she said, her hand resting on his head. “I would 
have liked to see the beautiful world again — but in the next life there 
will be so much to see, p’rhaps it is best to rest a little first. Dear, 
dear,” as he shook her with his sobs, “I would let you have your will. 
Shan’t the Lord have His will, too, when we love Him so?” 

“There is no charge,” said the doctor when the man drew out his an- 
cient wallet. “She has done more for me that I could do for her.” 

Not Afraid (421).’ 

It is well, then, to be assured that one of the purposes served by 
the mission of Christ was to dispel the fear of death by destroying that 
which gave it power to terrify. The fear of death is here represented as 
a bondage, a condition of slavery out of which every child of God must 
. be emancipated. There is an old Talmudic legend that the dimple on 
I every man’s and woman’s upper lip was impressed by the hand of God, 

! who in creating all human flesh whispered, “It is well,” but pressed His 
finger on our mouths to prevent us telling each other what we know. 
This legend aptly enough expresses the thought that every child of God 
should live with absolute fearlessness, however little he may be able 
to justify his confidence to those who challenge it. The freedom with 
which the truth makes free is rarely enjoyed, rarely even conceived. 
Men are content “to grunt and sweat” under the bondage of the world, 
its anxieties, its restraints, rather than live with God in perfect freedom. 


RESIGNATION— TRUST 


209 


A life here and now that is hut the full expression of our own will and 
spirit, a life that verifies that “all things are ours,” that everything is 
for the children of God, is the rarest kind of life. — Dods. 

The Prepared Path (422). 

The only serious matter is to discover the prepared path. We may do 
this by abiding fellowship with the spirit. Remember how when Paul 
essayed to turn aside from the prepared path of life, and to go first to 
the left to Ephesus, and then to the right unto Bithynia, in each case the 
spirit of Jesus suffered him not. For the most part the trend of daily cir- 
cumstances will indicate the prepared path; hut whenever we come to a 
standstill, puzzled to know which path to take of three or four that 
converge at a given point, let us stand still and consider the matter, 
asking God to speak to us through our judgments and to bar 
every path but the right. When once the decision is made, let us never 
look back. Let us never dare to suppose that God could fail them that 
trust Him, or permit them to make a mistake. If difficulties arise, they 
do not prove us to be wrong, and probably they are less by His path 
than they would have been by any other. Go forward. The way has been 
prepared; the mountains are a way; the rivers have fords; the lions 
are chained; the very waves shall yield a path; the desert shall be a 
highway to the land that flows with milk and honey. — F. B. Meyer. 

Those Who Are Missed (423). 

Mortal years take away those we love. How can we face a Merry 
Christmas and a Happy New Year when all the mirth and happiness of 
life is covered by the pall of grief? The holiday season is an ordeal — 
an almost insupportable one — to many suffering hearts. Who shall roll 
away the stone from the door of their sorrow? It is the old question, 
forever new. And the old answer is forever true — the answer of eternity 
to time. It is the angels that roll away the stone. Never is heaven nearer 
to us than when we celebrate the coming of Christ, the incarnation of 
the Eternal in our clay, and close upon it, the passing of the years of 
earth. Those who have left us for heaven are very near — and theirs is 
the Happy New Year, the immortal year, whose joys cannot fade or fail. 
The sense of loss abides with us. That we cannot change nor cease to feel. 
But the sense of the love of God, at this holy day time, can so be felt, 
too, that the thought of the little child taken up in His arms, the gentle 
saint gone home to Him, the strong souls whom He has called up higher, 
will lift our spirits up into the joy in which those loved ones stand trans- 
figured, safe from all the chances and changes of the years. 

Love is the immortal thing against which time and death cannot pre- 
vail; and God is love. To look from the earthly years upward to the 
heavenly is to rejoice, even through tears. — Harper’s Bazar. 

God's Bird (424). 

There is a story of an Indian child who one day came in from the 
wheat-field with a hurt bird in her hand. Running to the old chief, she 
said: “See! This is my bird. I found it in the wheat. It is hurt.” The old 
man looked at the wounded bird and replied slowly: “No, it is not your 


210 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


bird, my child — it is God’s bird. Take it back and lay it down where you 
found it. If you keep it, it will die. If you give it back into God’s hands, 
He will heal its hurt and it will live.” 

What the old Indian said of hurt birds is true of hearts hurt by sor- 
row. No human hand can heal them — the only safe thing to do in time of 
grief is to put our lives into God’s hands, to commit them to Him. His 
hands are gentle and skillful. They will not break a bruised reed nor 
quench the smoking flax. He will give us just the help we need and just 
when we need it. — Selected. 

Implicit Trust (425). 

What a vast proportion of our lives is spent in anxious and useless 
forebodings concerning the future, either our own or that of our dear 
ones! Present joys, present blessings, slip by and we miss half their 
sweet flavor, and all for want of faith in Him who provides for the 
tiniest insect in the sunbeam. O, when shall we learn the sweet trust in 
God our little children teach us every day by their confiding faith in 
us? We who are so mutable, so faulty, so irritable, so unjust, and He 
who is so watchful, so pitiful, so loving, so forgiving! Why cannot we, 
slipping our hand into His each day, walk trustingly over that day’s 
appointed path, thorny or flowery, crooked or straight, knowing that 
evening will bring us sleep, peace, and home? — Selected. 

All Is Well (426). — The Christian with Tennyson exclaims: “I have 
felt:” in the darkness I hear the sentinel walking up and down, whisper- 
ing “All is well!” 

Fear Not For I Am With Thee (427). 

In a sketch of his boyhood the Rev. John McNeil, a Scotch preacher 
and evangelist, tells this story of an experience with his father: “I 
remember one Saturday night it was nearly midnight when I started to 
tramp six or seven miles down through the lonely glen to get home. The 
road had a bad name. This particular night was very black, and two 
miles outside our little village the road gets blacker than ever. I was 
just entering the dark defile, when about one hundred yards ahead, in 
the densest of the darkness, there suddenly rang out a great, strong, 
cheery voice: ‘Is that you, Johnny?’ It was my father — the bravest, 
strongest man I ever knew. Many a time since, when things have been 
getting very black and gloomy about me, I have heard a voice greater 
than any earthly parent cry: ‘Fear not; for I am with thee.’ And lo! 
God’s foot is rising and falling on the road before us as we tread the 
journey of life. Don’t let us forget that.” 

Clouds Transformed (428). 

In one of the German picture galleries is a painting called “Cloud- 
land.” It hangs at the end of a long gallery, and at first sight it looks 
like a huge, repulsive daub of confused color, without form or comeli- 
ness. As you walk toward it, the picture begins to take shape; it proves 
to be a mass of exquisite little cherub faces like those at the head of the 


RESIGNATION— TRUST 


211 


canvas in Raphael’s “Madonna San Sisto.” If you come close to the 
picture, you see only an innumerable company of little angels and 
cherubim. 

IIow often the soul that is frightened by trial sees nothing but a con- 
fused and repulsive mass of broken expectations and crushed hopes! 
But if that soul, instead of fleeing away into unbelief and despair, will 
only draw up near to God, it will soon discover that the cloud is full 
of angels of mercy. — Theo. L. Cuyler. 

For the Sake of the Living (429). 

It is natural in the earliest sudden agony of bereavement to lead a 
life of torpor, except in one direction. Nerves, acute to the sense of suf- 
fering, are blunted to all other feelings. If there be any emotion, it is 
often one of profound wonder that anybody on God’s earth can be happy 
when we are so sad, and of resentment at the rebound of others from the 
shock of sorrow. The first laughter in the house, the first gay whistle of 
a boy running in from school, the first interest shown in business or in 
politics by the head of the house seems forgetfulness of the one who has 
gone, and moves the heart still absorbed in grief to a sentiment akin 
to indignation. 

Nevertheless, reaction must come, and it argues no lack of tender- 
ness in memory, but only a natural and wholesome state of things when 
the song comes back to the lips which have been dumb and the talk 
around the table ripples on, unsubdued by the vacant chair. It is a happy 
thing, too, when the dear one is not dropped out of the talk, when refer- 
ence is made to her as of old, to him as when he was going in and out 
among us. We treat our dead very coldly when we never mention their 
names, never allude to their wishes, act as if indeed they had ceased to 
belong to us and ours. 

For the sake of the earthly living, let us always bear in our minds 
a thought of the heavenly living, our beloved in other worlds, as much 
ours when there as while here. — Margaret Sangster. 

The Smile of the Pilot (430). 

Robert Louis Stevenson’s story of a storm that caught a vessel off 
a rocky coast and threatened to drive it and its passengers to destruc- 
tion, is thrilling. In the midst of the terror one daring man, contrary to 
orders, went to the deck, made a dangerous passage to the pilot house, 
saw the steersman lashed fast at his post holding the wheel unwaver- 
ingly and inch by inch turning the ship out once more to sea. The pilot 
saw the watcher and smiled. Then the daring passenger went below 
and gave out a note of cheer. “I have seen the face of the pilot and 
he smiled. It is all well.” 

Blessed is he who in the midst of earthly stress and storm can say 
with equal assurance, “I have seen the face of my Pilot and he smiled.” 

Like As a Father (431). 

A little incident which beautifully illustrated the words of David, 
spoken so long ago, came under my notice recently. It so impressed 
and comforted me that I want to pass it on. 


212 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


We were seated around the tea table in my friend’s pleasant home, 
when it seems the little daughter reached to help herself with undue 
haste. The father reproved her, and it must have been very gently, 
for there was not any interruption in the conversation. But a lady seated 
by the child’s side told me afterward that Jennie’s eyes filled with tears, 

and she slipped quietly away from the table. But I did notice Mr. H 

excusing himself and also leaving the room. 

Immediately after tea I had occasion to visit the adjoining sitting 
room, where I found the little one nestled in her father’s strong arms, the 
tears still falling from her blue eyes, but looking up trustfully into the 
brown ones bent above hers and glistening with sympathy, while the 
voice, tender and manly, was saying: “There, there, darling; papa would 
not hurt his little pet’s feelings or spoil her supper if he could help it. 
See, papa could not eat any more when he knew you were feeling so 
badly. Now, sweetheart, let us go and see if there is anything left for us. 
Mother will attend to us herself.” 

For some time they talked softly; then I heard a little ripple of 
laughter, and they went to finish the meal, her hand clasped in her 
father’s. 

But I had my lesson. What a sweet remembrance for that child. 
Thank God for our Christian fathers, and while the tears dropped down 
my cheeks I cried silently, “Does God love me so?” And the answer 
came and stayed: “Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord 
pitieth them that fear Him.” Psa. 103:13. — Christian Guardian. 

The Master Close at Hand (432). 

A woman who was not long ago in circumstances of extraordinary 
trial, said that she was lying awake at two o’clock in the morning. 
As every one knows, this is the hour of lowest vitality, and when the 
body is weak, the mind often shares the depression. She was in a place 
where she did not know what step to take next. One course seemed 
open to her, but it was a course that she much disliked to take. While 
she hesitated, balancing considerations in her thought, she said that she 
heard a voice speaking as distinctly as if it were that of a friend in the 
room, “O! thou of little faith: wherefore dost thou doubt?” Who spoke? 
No one was near. The moonlight lay in silver waves on the floor of the 
room. But she had heard the voice, she understood its gentle chiding, 
she asked for more faith, and fell asleep. When the full light of day 
came she rose and went on her way, reinforced and confident, for her 
faith was now great where it had been little. The result proved that 
God, as He always does, waited to keep His promise. 

“If Jesus came to earth again 

And walked and talked in field and street, 

Who would not lay his human pain 
Low at those heavenly feet, 


RESIGNATION— TRUST 


213 


And leave the loom, and leave the lute. 
And leave the volume on the shelf. 

To follow Him unquestioning, mute. 

If ’twere the Lord Himself ?” 

— Selected. 


A Hopeless Death (433). 

I want something better than the best disbeliever in Jesus Christ 
ever possessed. God forbid that I should ever say an untrue or an un- 
kind word about any of the sons of men — least of all that I should seem 
to tear aside with ruthless hand the veil that hides the secret place of sor- 
row! But the occurrence to which I am about to refer was not done in a 
corner, and I only bring to your mind what you all know when I mention 
the time when Colonel Ingersoll endeavored to fulfill the promise made to 
his brother, who was also his boyhood’s playmate, and pronounced his 
* funeral address. It was in June, 1879. This brother had died in Wash- 
ington, and Colonel Ingersoll stood by the coffin and tried to read his ad- 
dress. His voice became agitated, his form trembled, and his emotion 
overcame him. Finally he put down the paper, and, bowing himself upon 
the coffin, he gave vent to uncontrollable grief. When at last he was able 
to proceed he raised himself up, and among other words he said these: 
“Whether in mid-ocean or ’mid the breakers of the farther shore, a 
wreck must mark at last the end of each and all; and every life, no 
matter if its every hour be filled with love and every moment jeweled 
with a joy, will at the last become a tragedy as sad and dark and deep 

as can be woven of the warp and woof of mystery and death Life 

is a dark and barren vale between the cold and iceclad peaks of two 
eternities. We strive in vain to look beyond the heights. We lift our 
wailing voices in the silence of the night, and hear no answer but the 
bitter echo of our cry.” Could ever words more sadly hopeless have 
been uttered at a time like that? And then he added what to me were 
the most pathetic words of all — something about “hope trying to see a 
star, and listening for the rustle of an angel’s wings.” 

Mrs. Browning most truly writes: 

“ ‘There is no God,’ the foolish saith, 

But none, ‘There is no sorrow.’ 

And nature oft in bitter need 
The cry of faith will borrow. 

Eyes which the preacher could not school, 

By wayside graves are raised; 

And lips cry, ‘God be pitiful!’ 

Which ne’er said, ‘God be praised!’ ” 

I think I should like greater comfort and a better hope than that. 
—Mills. 

Troubles Ahead (434). 

Many have dreaded troubles which they thought must come; and 
while they went on ever expecting to make the turn in their path, which 
was to open out fully the evil, lo! they found that they had reached the 


214 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


journey’s end, and were at the haven where they would be. Even for 
others it is not wise to indulge in overmuch looking forward in fearful- 
ness. Come what may to the dearest ones we have on earth, God and 
His upholding grace will be there, and He cares for them more than 
even we can do. An earnest commendation to His love will avail them 
more than all our fretting. — H. L. Sidney Lear. 

“Be Still” (435). 

Do you know what Luther said? “Suffer and be still and tell no man 
thy sorrow; trust in God — His help will not fail thee.” This is what 
Scripture calls keeping silence before God. To talk much of one’s 
sorrows makes one weak, but to tell one’s sorrows to Him who heareth 
in secret makes one strong and calm. — Tholuck. 

“They Shall Not Be Afraid” (436). 

Rev. Charles H. Spurgeon, of London, in his commentary on the 
ninety-first psalm, makes this interesting record: “Before expounding 
these verses I cannot refrain from recording a personal incident which 
illustrates their power to soothe the heart when they are applied by 
the Holy Spirit. In the year 1854, when I had scarcely been in London 
twelve months, the neighborhood in which I labored was visited by 
Asiatic cholera, and my congregation' suffered from its inroads. Family 
after family summoned me to the bedside of the smitten, and almost 
every day I was called to visit the grave. I gave myself up with youth- 
ful ardor to the visitation of the sick, and was sent for from all corners 
of the district by persons of all ranks and religions. I became weary 
in body and sick at heart. My friends were falling one by one, and I 
felt, or fancied, that I was sickening like those around me. A little 
more work and weeping would have laid me low among the rest; I felt 
that my burden was heavier than I could bear and was ready to sink 
under it. As God would have it, I was returning mournfully from a 
funeral, when my curiosity led me to read a paper which was wafered 
up in a shoemaker’s window in Dover Road. It did not look like a trade 
announcement, nor was it, for it bore, in good bold handwriting, these 
words, ‘Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the 
Most High, thy habitation, there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall 
any plague come nigh thy dwelling.’ The effect upon my heart was imme- 
diate. Faith appropriated the passage as her own. I felt secure, refreshed, 
girt with immortality. I went on with my visitings of the dying with a 
calm and peaceful spirit; I felt no fear of evil, and suffered no harm. 
The Providence which moved the tradesman to place those verses in his 
window I gratefully acknowledge, and in the remembrance of its mar- 
velous power I adore the Lord my God.” 

We are not afraid of pestilence when there is no pestilence. We 
are not afraid of war when peace reigns. But are we not afraid of what 
men say or think of us? Are we not afraid of some loss or adversity? 
Why should we be afraid of anything? The Lord our God is round about 
us — what foe can make our souls afraid? — Selected. 


RESIGNATION— TRUST 


215 


His Angels Charge Over Thee (437). 

A Christian woman had occasion to go across a ferry to New York 
late one night. On the boat she noticed a man watching her, who ap- 
proached later and asked, “Are yon alone?” “No, sir,” said the lady. 
The man dropped behind, but the lady heard his step after her as she 
walked through the deserted street, and lifted her heart to God in prayer 
for protection. Presently the step quickened, and the man was walking 
beside her. “I thought you said you were not alone.” “I am not, sir,” 
was the lady’s reply. There was a note of sarcasm in the man’s voice 
as he remarked, “I do not see one — who is your company?” “The Lord 
Jesus and His holy angels,” was the reply. With the briefest pause, 
the man responded, “Madam, you keep too good company for me. 
Good evening!” And he raised his hat and left her to her better com- 
panionship. — The Christian. 

Cloudy Days’ Trust (438). 

A heart rejoicing in God delights in all His will and is surely pro- 
vided with the most firm joy in all estates; for if nothing can come to 
pass beside or against His will, then cannot that soul be vexed which 
delights in Him and hath no will but His, but follows Him in all times, 
in all estates; not only when He shines bright on them, but when they 
are clouded. That flower which follows the sun doth so even in the 
dark and cloudy days: when it does not shine forth, yet it follows the 
hidden course and motion of it. So the soul that moves after God keeps 
that course when He hides His face; is content, yea, even glad at His 
will in all estates or conditions or events. — R. Leighton. 

Resignation (439). 

“I shall never believe in prayer again” said a broken-hearted girl, 
as the Youth’s Companion tells us. “If ever any one prayed in faith, I 
prayed that my mother might recover. But she died. Oh, how could 
God be so cruel?” 

Wisely her friend answered. “There are few deaths, thank God, 
where no one present prays that the dear one may live. Do you sup- 
pose that the gift of prayer was given us in order that no one may ever 
die? Do you think God intended men to live on in growing infirmity, till 
at last they pray for death to save them from despair? If God gave 
us all we ask for — gave it to all men — we should never dare to pray. 
Prayer is a blessing because God knows best how to answer. God knows 
when to say no. 

“You prayed. Thank God that you could pray. You prayed in hope, 
and even now you would not have it otherwise. Pray still, but pray in 
trust. Pray that God will give you strength for your present bur- 
dens, and light enough to follow in the path of duty, one day at a time. 
You said you could never pray again, but you will. 

“There are no unanswered prayers. Pray that you may know your 
duty; pray for rest and hope and trust. With those will come peace 


216 . 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


and new courage, but not absence of sorrow. The peace and courage 
will enable you to bear the sorrow. That will be the answer to your 
prayer.” 

So with calmness of spirit the sad young woman faced the world 
again, and daily prayer gave her daily strength. In the deepening of 
her life and the strengthening of her character her friends discovered 
the answer to her prayers, even those that had seemed unanswered. 

Trusting Our Guide (440). 

There is One only whose wisdom is infallible, whose advice never 
errs, and He would be our Guide. There is a little prayer in one of the 
Psalms which pleads: “Cause me to know the way wherein I should 
walk.” This prayer, if sincere, will always be answered. We may see 
no hand leading us. We may hear no voice saying, as we walk in the 
darkness, “This is the way, walk ye in it.” Yet if we seek divine guid- 
ance and accept it implicitly, we shall always have it. We have it in 
Browning: 

“I go to prove my soul! 

I see my way as birds their trackless way, 

I shall arrive! what time, what circuit first, 

I ask not: but unless God send his hail 
Or blinding fireballs, sleet or stifling snow. 

In some time, His good time, I shall arrive; 

He guides me and the bird. In His good time!” 

Not only do we have keeping and guidance in Christ, but everything 
we need on the way, and then eternal blessedness. — J. R. Miller, D. D. 

Holding Our Father’s Hand (441). 

A prominent business man had a Christian wife who died praying 
for his conversion. One night, while lying awake in the darkness of his 
room, he heard a voice from the little bed at his side, “Take my hand, 
papa, it’s so dark.” He reached forth his large strong hand and took 
the small trembling one in it until the frightened child fell asleep. Then 
that strong business man looked up through the darkness and said: 
“Father, take thou my hand as I have taken the hand of my child, and 
give rest of soul, for Jesus’ sake.” Then it was that he felt the com- 
forting influence of the divine presence, and knew that God was nigh. 
— Theodore Cuyler, D. D. 

Finding the Roses (442). 

A German allegory tells of two little girls. They had been playing 
together in a strange garden, and soon one ran in to her mother full of 
disappointment. “The garden’s a sad place, mother.” “Why, my 
child?” “I’ve been all around, and every rose-tree has cruel, long thorns 
on it!” Then the second child came in breathless. “O mother, the 
garden’s a beautiful place!” “How so, my child?” “Why, I’ve been all 
around, and every thorn-bush has lovely roses growing on it,” And 
the mother wondered at the difference in the two children. 


RESIGNATION— TRUST 


217 


Lives Rooted in God (443). 

“Strangers with thee,” — then we may carry our thoughts forward 
to the time when we shall go to our true home, nor wander any longer in 
the land that is not ours. If even here we come into such blessed rela- 
tionship with God, that fact is in itself a prophecy of a more perfect 
communion and a heavenly house. They who are strangers with Him 
will one day be at “home with the Lord.” And in the light of that 
blessed hope the transiency of this life changes its whole aspect, loses 
the last trace of sadness, and becomes a solemn joy. Why should we be 
pensive and wistful when we think how near our end is? Is the sentry 
sad as the hour for relieving guard comes nigh? Is the wanderer in far 
off lands sad when he turns his face homewards? And why should we 
not rejoice at the thought that we, strangers and foreigners here, shall 
soon depart to the true metropolis, the mother-country of our souls? 
I do not know why a man should be either regretful or afraid, as he 
watches the hungry sea eating away this “bank and shoal of time” upon 
which he stands — even though the tide has all but reached his feet — 
if he knows that God’s strong hand will be stretched forth to him at 
the moment when the sand dissolves from under him, and will draw him 
out of many waters, and place him high above the floods in that stable 
land where there is “no more sea.” 

Lives rooted in God through faith in Jesus Christ are not vanity. 
Let us lay hold of Him with a loving grasp — and “we shall live also” 
because He lives, as He lives, so long as He lives. The brief days of 
earth will be blessed while they last, and fruitful of what shall never 
pass. We shall have Him with us while we journey — and all our journey- 
ings will lead to rest in Him. True, men walk in a vain show; true, 
the “world passeth away and the lust thereof,” — but, blessed be God! 
true, also, “He that doeth the will of God abideth forever.” — Alexander 
Maclaren, D. D. 


I Will Fear No Evil (444). 

Even the shadow of death loses all its terrors when we are close 
to God. How confidently David sings in his Shepherd Psalm, “Though 
I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; 
for thou are with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” 

No man who has seen as much of the shadow of death as I have will 
ever make light of it. It is indeed a dark shadow. It fell over my house 
one day, and a noble boy, my firstborn son, the light and the gladness of 
the household, faded out of our sight. And though more than twenty years 
have passed since I stood under that shadow, a hundred times a year, 
when I am alone, my heart grows tender and my eyes fill with tears 
in memory of that day. But, thank God, the blackness of the shadow 
has long since passed away. The shadow has grown white, for now I 
feel and know that though out of my earthly presence that sweet song 
bird has flown, and sings there no more, still it sits in the Tree of Life 
and sings, and I shall hear it again. — Banks. 


'213 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


Look Up (445). 

In the early days of Britain, when the Christian Cuthbert and his 
companions were driven from the hitter land to sea, and then were cast 
upon a dreary shore by a terrible storm, they cried, “No path is open 
for us; let us perish: we are driven from land to sea and from sea to 
land.” And Cuthbert answered, “Have ye so little faith, my comrades?” 
and then lifting his eyes to heaven he prayed, “I thank thee, Lord, that the 
way to heaven is still open.” When there is no other way to look for 
help, we may look up. — The Classmate. 

Unbroken Connection with God (446). 

' I stood upon a bridge spanning a railroad in Boston, and reflected 
how those rails disappearing around yonder curve, stretched on, without 
a break, across three thousand miles of continent, till, beginning at the 
Atlantic, they stopped only at the Pacific Ocean. It would be a matter of 
faith (“not by sight”) to commit myself to them, in order to make the 
overland journey. So of sending a message over the equally continuous 
wires. Yet more of seeking communication by “wireless,” where, how- 
ever, a continuous intervening medium is assumed — not seen. The 
return current of the telegraphic wire, in order to complete the circuit, 
has, in fact, long been entrusted to an invisible medium, and not in vain. 
“Call upon me, and I will answer thee” “From the secret place of 
thunder.” — Homiletic Review. 

Let Christ Bear It and You (447). 

An aged, weary woman, carrying a heavy basket, got into a train 
with me the other day, and when she was seated she still kept the 
heavy burden upon her arm. “Lay your burden down, mum,” said the 
kindly voice of a workingman. “Lay your burden down, mum; the 
train will carry both it and you.” — Jowett. 

Our Captain (443). 

Some years ago, when Captain Dutton was commander of the “Sar- 
mian,” we had entered the River St. Lawrence on our homeward voy- 
age, when suddenly a heavy fog arose which completely hid the shore 
and all objects from view. The ship, which was going at full speed, 
continued on her course without relaxing the least. The passengers 
became frightened, considering it extremely reckless on the part of the 
captain. Finally, one of them went and remonstrated with the mate, 
telling him of the fears of the passengers. He listened, then, replied 
with a smile: “Oh, don’t be frightened; the passengers need not be the 
least uneasy; the fog extends only a certain height above the water, 
and the captain is at the masthead, and is up above the fog, and it is 
he who is directing the vessel!” — The Baptist Commonwealth. 

Today and Tomorrow (449). 

Today’s wealth may be tomorrow’s poverty, today’s health, to- 
morrow’s sickness, today’s happy companionship of love, tomorrow’s 
aching solitude of heart, but today’s God will be tomorrow’s God, to- 
day’s Christ will be tomorrow’s Christ. Other fountains may dry up 


RESIGNATION— TRUST 


219 


in heat or freeze in winter, hut this knows no change, “in summer and 
winter it shall be.” Other fountains may sink low in their basins after 
much drawing, but this is ever full, and, after a thousand generations 
have drawn from its stream, is broad and deep as ever. Other fountains 
may be left behind on the march, and the wells and palm-trees of each 
Elim on our road be succeeded by a dry and thirsty land where no water 
is, but this spring follows us all through the wilderness, and makes 
music and spreads freshness ever by our path. We can forecast nothing 
beside. We can be sure of this, that God will be with us in all the days 
that lie before us. What may be round the next headland we know not; 
but this we know, that the same sunshine will make a broadening path 
across the waters right to where we rock on the unknown sea, and the 
same unmoving mighty star will burn for our guidance. So we may 
let the waves and currents roll as they list — or rather as He wills, and 
be little concerned about the incidents or the companions of our voyage, 
since He is with us. — Alexander Maclaren, D. D. 

Childlike Trust (450). 

A wild storm was raging around a prairie home one night. Th9 
windows were blown in, and no lights could be kept burning. It was 
only with difficulty that the doors could be braced against the blast. 
The father was absent from home, and the mother, grandmother, and 
three children sat in the darkness in a room on the sheltered side of 
the house, fearing that at any moment the house might be swept from the 
foundations by the force of the wind. Suddenly eleven-year-old Walter 
was missed. He had been holding a whispered conversation with his 
grandmother only a few minutes before. Frantic with fear, the mother 
called him at the top of her voice, and, receiving no reply, started to 
grope her way through the darkness and confusion of the house to 
find, if possible, the missing boy. She found him in his room sound asleep! 
And when she asked him how he could go to sleep when they were all 
in danger, he simply replied: “Why, mama, grandma told me God would 
take care of us, and I thought I might as well go to bed again.” — New 
York Observer. 

The Faces Loved Long Since and Lost Awhile (451). 

If we love, we must lose. Where love is not, there is nothing to 
lose. Inasmuch as loss is inevitable, the wise man will ask whether it 
does not have a meaning deeper than any the reason of man has yet form- 
ulated, and he will try to have that attitude toward life and death which 
makes grief ennobling. 

The tasks of some who have gone before seem to have been com- 
pleted. After years of toil and triumph these workers have gone to their 
reward. 

“Fear no more the heat o’ sun, 

Nor the furious winter rages; 

Thou thy worldly task hast done. 

Home hast gone and ta’en thy wages.” 


220 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


At the grave of the child and of the young man or the young woman 
there comes the feeling that earth has been robbed, that there are tasks 
and no one to do them. It is then that we need to recognize the imper- 
fections of our knowledge and to believe — 

“That nothing walks with -aimless feet; 

That not one life shall be destroyed; 

Or cast as rubbish to the void, 

When God hath made the pile complete.” 

We do not lose those whom we love. 

“But in the sun they cast no shade, 

No voice is heard, no sign is made. 

No step is on the conscious floor!” 

Yet they are ever with us. Our lives are poor in feeling and 
imagination if we cannot find the meaning of Tennyson’s lines — 

“Thy voice is on the rolling air; 

I hear thee where the waters run: 

Thou standest in the rising sun. 

And in the setting thou art fair. 

“Far off thou art, but ever nigh, 

I have thee still, and I rejoice; 

I prosper, circled with thy voice; 

I shall not lose thee though I die.” 

In the hour of temptation and when duty is hard the memory of 
one who trusted us in our days of weakness and blindness saves us 
from cowardice and sin. There are those who say they are weak be- 
cause father, mother, wife, husband, or friend is gone. Have not such 
persons learned very imperfectly the lessons of affection? Are they 
eye-servants who do nothing well when the master is absent? Is their 
affection so earthy that it cannot live upon memory and hope? If 
we have not been selfishly receiving, and giving in return nothing of 
value, ought we not to be stronger when those who have taught us 
what is worth while and have inspired us to put our best into our work 
are no longer with us to guide and cheer us? The patriot is stronger 
because he has before him the example of his country’s heroes. The 
Christian rejoices in tribulation, for he believes he is continuing the 
work of the martyrs of his faith. Is the example of those whom we 
have known less powerful than that of those whom we have never seen? 

We have lost our friends for a while. The Christian lives in hope. 
With Paul he says, “I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor 
angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things 
to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to 
separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” 
The love of God is the basis of hope. Those who have not the certainty 
of God’s love may use the word hope, but they know not its meaning. 
The boundless ocean upon which our loved ones have embarked is the 
ocean of God’s love. “That which drew from out the boundless deep” 
has turned again to its home, 


RESIGNATION— TRUST 

“What is excellent 
As God lives is permanent; 

Hearts are dust, heart’s loves remain: 

Heart’s love will meet thee again.” 

— The Christian Century. 


221 


222 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


ILLUSTRATIVE POETRY. 

Come To My Help (452). 

Come to my help, O Master! — once in sorrow 
My more than brother — King of Glory now; 

Even in my tears a gleam of hope I borrow 
From the deep scars around Thy radiant brow. 

Come to my* help, as once God’s angels hastened 
To cheer Thee in Thy midnight agony; 

O Lord of angels! once by suff’ring chastened. 

Forget me not in mine infirmity. 

Walk Thou the wave with me, the tempest stilling; 

Let me but feel the clasping of Thy strength — 

Thy heavenly strength — through all my pulses thrilling, 

I shall not fear to reach the shore at length. 

— Dr. Bethune. 


Resigned (453). 

As chiselled image unresisting lies 
In niche by its own Sculptor’s hand designed. 

So to my unemployed and silent life 
Let me in quiet meekness be resigned. 

If works of faith and labours sweet of love 
May not be mine, yet patient hope may be 

Within my heart like a bright censer’s fire 
With incense of thanksgiving mounting free. 

Thou art our Pattern to the end of time 
O Crucified! and perfect is Thy will; 

The workers follow Thee in doing good, 

The helpless think of Calvary, and are still. 

— Caroline M. Noel. 


No Fear (454). 

# *To Thy beyond no fear I give: 

Because thou livest, I live, 

Unsleeping Friend! why should I wake 
Troublesome thought to take 
For any strange to-morrow? In thy hand, 
Days and eternities like flowers expand. 
“Odors from blossoming worlds unknown 
Across my path are blown; 

Thy robes trail hither myrrh and spice 
From farthest paradise; 

I walk through thy fair universe with thee, 
And sun me in thine immortality.” 


RESIGNATION— TRUST 


223 


My Hope (455). 

For though from out our bourne of time and place 
The flood may bear me far, 

I hope to see my Pilot face to face, 

When I have crossed the bar. 

— Tennyson. 

The Lost Chord (456). 

“I sat alone at the organ at the close of a troubled day, 

When the sunset’s crimson embers on the western altar lay; 

I was weary with vain endeavor, and my heart was ill at ease. 

And I sought to soothe my sadness with the voice of the sweet-toned 
keys. 

But my hands were weak and trembling, and my fingers all unskilled, 
To render the grand old anthem with which my soul was filled; 

Thro* the long day’s cares and worries I had dreamed of that glorious 
strain. 

And I longed to hear the organ repeat it to me again; 

But it fell from my untaught fingers discordant and incomplete, 

I knew not how to express it, nor to make the discord sweet; 

So I toiled with patient labor till the last bright gleams were gone, 

And the evening’s purple shadows were gathering one by one. 

Then a master stood beside me and touched the noisy keys, 

And lo! the discord vanished, and melted in perfect peace; 

I hear the great organ pealing my tune that I could not play — 

The strains of the glorious anthem that had filled my soul all day. 

Down thro’ the dim cathedral the tide of the music swept. 

And among the shadowy arches the lingering echoes crept; 

And I stood in the purple twilight and heard my tune again, 

Not my feeble untaught rendering, but the master’s perfect strain. 

So I think perchance the Master, at the close of life’s weary day, 

Will take from our trembling fingers the tune that we cannot play; 

He will hear thro’ the jarring discords, the strains but half exprest, 

He will blend them in perfect music, and add to them all the rest.” 

— Mrs. Minnie Kinney. 

The Sweet Refrain (457). 

I hear it singing in the dawn — 

A world-old, sweet refrain — 

I hear its notes insistent drawn 
In music of the rain; 

It sings within the swaying corn, 

A canticle of cheer 
That glorifies the golden morn: 

“He loves thee; do not fear.” 


I hear it singing in the noon 
When aging summer grieves. 

And fading maples sadly croon 
The farewell of the leaves; 

I hear it when ’mid shrouding 
snows 

The chanting winds intone 
A threnody above the rose: 

“Will He not keep His own?” 


224 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


I hear it singing in the night 
When out across the bar 
The moonlight falls in shimmering white, 

And calls my bark afar; 

It sings to me when vesper bells 
Steal out upon the deep, 

And through all nature sings and swells; 

“He loves thee; rest and sleep.” 

— Rose Trumbull in Sunday School Times. 

A Little Way (458). 

A little way — I know it is not far 
To that dear home where my beloved are; 

And yet my faith grows weaker, as I stand 
A poor, lone pilgrim in a dreary land, 

Where present pain the future bliss obscures; 

And still my heart sits like a bird upon 

The empty nest, and mourns its treasures gone; 

Plumed for their flight, J 

And vanished quite. 

Ah me! where is the comfort? — though I say 
They have but journeyed on a little way! 

A little way! — this sentence I repeat. 

Hoping and longing to extract some sweet 
To mingle with the bitter. From Thy hand 
I take the cup I cannot understand, 

And in my weakness give myself to Thee! 

Although it seems so very, very far 
To that dear home where my beloved are, 

I know, I know. 

It is not so; 

Oh! give me faith to feel it when I say 
That they are gone — gone but a little way! 

— Anon. 


Thy Will (459). 

One prayer I have — all prayers in one — 

Since I am wholly Thine; 

Thy blessed will, O God be done, 

And let Thy will be mine! 

Be Not Afraid (460). 

When death is at hand, and the cottage of clay 
Is left with a tremulous sigh, 

The gracious forerunner is smoothing the way 
For its tenant to pass to unchangeable day, 
Saying, “Be not afraid, it is I.” 



RESIGNATION— TRUST 


225 


When the waters are passed, and the glories unknown 
Burst forth on the wondering eye, 

The compassionate “Lamb in the midst of the throne” 
Shall welcome, encourage, and comfort His own. 

And say, “Be not afraid, it is I.” 

— Nathaniel Hawthorne. 

Life's Lessons (461). 

A child came close to his teacher’s side. 

His book tight clasped in his little hand, 
“Teacher,” he said with wistful eyes, 

“We’re coming to words that I don’t understand; 
I’ve turned the pages over and over, 

And the v r ords are so big and they’re all so new. 
When we come to the lesson where they are put. 

Oh, teacher, I don’t know what I’ll do.” 

The teacher smiled at the troubled face, 

And tenderly stroked the curly head. 

“Before we reach them I think you will learn 
The way to read them,” she gently said; 

“But if you shouldn’t. I’ll help you then. 

And don’t you think that the wisest plan 
Is to learn the lesson that comes today. 

And learn it the very best you can?” 

And it seems to me it is so with us; 

We look at the days that are still ahead — 

The days that perchance may never be ours — 

With a pitiful longing and nameless dread. 

But surely the Teacher who gives the task 
Will lovingly watch as we try to read 
With faltering tongue and tear-dimmed eyes, 

And will help His children in time of need. 

— Christian Observer. 


The Rod (462). 

O Thou whose sacred feet have trod 
The thorny path of woe, 

Forbid that I should slight the rod. 

Or faint beneath the blow. 

Give me the spirit of Thy trust. 

To suffer as a son; 

To say, though lying in the dust. 

Father! Thy will be done! 

— J. D. Burns. 


226 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


Faith and I (463). 

“We pace the deck together. 

Faith and I; 

In stress of midnight weather. 

Faith and I; 

And catch at times a vision 
Of the bright Eastern sky 
Where waiteth God to tell us 
That we shall never die.” 

Trust (464). 

Faith and hope 

Will teach me how to bear my lot — 

To think almighty wisdom best, 

To bow my head and mumur not. 

The chast’ning hand of One above 
Falls heavy, but I kiss the rod; 

It gives the wound, and I must trust 
Its healing to the self-same God. 

— Eliza Cook. 

The Angels of Grief (465). 

With silence only as their benediction, 

God’s angels come 

Where in the shadow of a great affliction, 

The soul sits dumb! 

Yet, would I say what thy own heart approveth: 

Our Father’s will, 

Calling to Him the dear one whom He loveth, 

Is mercy still. 

Not upon thee or thine the solemn angel 
Hath evil wrought; 

The funeral anthem is a glad evangel — 

The good die not! 

God calls our loved ones, but we lose not wholly 
What He hath given; 

They live on earth, in thought and deed, as truly 
As in His heaven. 

— John G. Whittier. 


Compensation (466). 

The graves grow thicker, and life’s ways more bare 
As years on years go by: 

Nay, thou hast more green gardens in thy care, 
And more stars in thy sky! 


RESIGNATION— TRUST 


227 


Behind, hopes turned to grief, and joys to memories, 

Are fading out of sight; 

Before, pains changed to peace, and dreams to certainties. 
Are glowing in God’s light. 

Hither come backslidings, defeats, distresses, 

Vexing this mortal strife; 

Thither go progress, victories, successes, 

Crowning immortal life. 

Few jubilees, few gladsome, festive hours, 

Form landmarks for my way; 

But heaven and earth, and saints and friends and flowers. 
Are keeping Easter Day! 

— Anon. 


The Assurance of Faith (467). 

So life stands, with a twilight world around; 

Faith turned serenely to the steadfast sky, 

Still answering the heart that sweeps the ground. 
Sobbing in fear, and tossing restlessly — 

Hush, hush! The dawn breaks o’er the eastern sea, 
’Tis but thine own dim shadow troubling thee. 

— Edward Rowland Sill. 


The Blessed Will (468). 


“My God, my Father, while I stray 
Far from my home on life’s rough 
way, 

O, teach me from my heart to say, 
Thy will be done! 


“If Thou shouldst call me to re- 
sign 

What most I prize — it ne’er was 
mine; 

I only yield Thee what was Thine; 
Thy will be done!” 


Resignation (469). 

O thou Most High! from whose celestial dwelling 
Infinite radiance of virtue shines. 

Let me behold. Thy richest mercy telling. 

The presence of Thy love in the confines 
Of my own heart, reflection of Thy glory. 

Thou rulest not within without the striving 
Of ages old contention with sin; 

The mastery of power is Thy devising: 

Eternal love the sway, doth my own fealty win. 

How fierce the winds have blown that brought the blasting 
Of bud and flower, of fragrance and of song; 

They mark the day that in its sacred passing 

Brought life and joy: and on the memories throng 
Mysterious transports of life’s fleeting story. 


228 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


Like field of golden grain, in summer waving, 

O’er which the light and shade successive play. 

Where clouds before the golden sun are chasing, 

Pierced through with rays, — so is life’s fitful day. 

If in our day like clouds must be the sorrow, 

Thy love provides the rays that pierce them through 

The rosy hue, gives promise of tomorrow. 

Which cloud and sun at close of day renew; 

Perchance the bow on cloud life’s story telling. 

The sky above looks clearest after showers. 

The earth below stands clad in brighter green; 

While, after storm, the birds’ song in its bowers 
Is sweetest heard: the flowers most beauteous seen. 

Thus, God of love, I thank Thee for the cadence, 

The apparent discords of life’s organ sound. 

Thy master hands on keys, foretell the advance, 

That sweetest music strike when closest harmony found, 

Of minors of life’s song into the majors swelling. 

Thou Artisan divine, play on! Thy theme unfolding. 

Till paean roll on paean o’er the soul; 

Earth’s sighing into heaven’s new song swelling, 

If but our life Thy glory may extol. 

— Rev. Floris Ferwerda. 


My Pilot (470). 


Sunset and evening star 
And one clear call for me 
And may there be no moaning of 
the bar 

When I put out to sea. 


Twilight and evening bell 
And after that the dark! 

And may there be no sadness of 
farewell 

When I embark! 


For tho’ from out our bourne of time and place 
The flood may bear me far, 

I hope to see my Pilot face to face 
When I have crossed the bar. 

— Tennyson. 


Patience (471). 

Let us be patient! These severe afflictions 
Not from the ground arise; 

But oftentimes celestial benedictions 
Assume this dark disguise. 

We see but dimly through the mists and vapours. 
Amid these earthly damps, 

What seem to us but sad, funereal tapers 
May be heaven’s distant lamps. 


RESIGNATION— TRUST 


229 


There is no death! What seems so is transition; 

This life of mortal breath 
Is but the suburb of the life elysian, 

Whose portals we call death. 

— Longfellow. 


Somebody Knows and Cares (472). 

Somebody knows when your heart aches, 

And everything seems to go wrong; 

Somebody knows when the shadows 
Need chasing away with a song. 

Somebody knows when you’re lonely. 

Tired, discouraged and blue; 

Somebody wants you to know Him, 

And know that He dearly loves you. 

Somebody cares when you’re tempted. 

And the world grows dizzy and dim: 
Somebody cares when you’re weakest. 

And farthest away from Him. 

Somebody grieves when you’ve fallen. 

Though you are not lost from His sight; 
Somebody waits for your coming. 

Taking the gloom from your night. 

— Fanny Edna Stafford. 

Angel of Patience (473). 

To weary hearts, to mourning homes, 

God’s meekest angel gently comes; 

No power has he to banish pain, 

Or give us back our lost again; 

And yet in tenderest love, our dear 
And heavenly Father sends him here. 

There’s quiet in that Angel’s glance, 

There’s rest in his still countenance! 

He mocks no grief with idle cheer, 

Nor wounds with words the mourner’s ear; 

But ills and woes he may not cure 
He kindly trains us to endure. 

Angel of patience! sent to calm 
Our feverish brows with cooling palm; 

To lay the storms of hope and fear, 

And reconcile life’s smile and tear; 

The throbs of wounded pride to still, 

And make our own, our Father’s will! 


230 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


O thou who mournest on thy way, 

With longings for the close of day; 

He walks with thee, that Angel kind. 

And gently whispers, “Be resigned; 

Bear up, bear on, the end shall tell 
The dear Lord ordereth all things well!” 

— John G. Whittier 


Surrender 

I said, “Let me walk in the fields.” 

He said, “No, walk in the town;” 

I said, “There are no flowers there.” 
He said, “No flowers, but a 
crown.” 

I said, “But the skies are black, 

There is nothing but noise and 
din;” 

And he wept as he sent me back, 
“There is more,” he said, “there 
is sin.” 

I said, “But the air is thick, 

And fogs are veiling the sun;” 

He answered, “Yet souls are sick, 
And souls in the dark undone.” 

I said, “I shall miss the light, 

And friends will miss me, they 
say;” 


(474). 

He answered, “Choose tonight, 

If I am to miss you, or they.” 

I pleaded for time to be given; 

He said, “Is it hard to decide? 

It will not seem hard in heaven. 

To have followed the steps of 
your Guide.” 

I cast one look at the fields, 

Then set my face to the town, 

He said, “My child, do you yield? 
Will you have the flowers or the 
crown?” 

Then into his hand went mine. 

And into my heart came he, 

And I walked in a light divine, 

The path I had feared to see. 

— George Macdonald. 


The Godward Path (475). 

“It matters not which road I take, I make mistakes, wrong turns 1 
How dark or lone it be — take — 

X know, O God, ’twill somewhere The right way do not see — 

join Tho long and hard I make my road 

The road that leads to thee. ’Twill join the road to thee. 

Calm is my soul, my trusting heart 
From doubt and fear is free — 

For soon or late all roads will join 
The road that leads to thee.” 

— Althea A. Ogden. 


Patient Trust (476). 

And though at times impetuous with emotion 
And anguish long suppressed, 

The swelling heart heaves moaning like the ocean 
That cannot be at rest, — 


RESIGNATION— TRUST 


2ol 


We will be patient and assuage the feeling 
We may not wholly stay; 

By silence sanctifying, not concealing, 

The grief that must have way. 

— Henry W. Longfellow. 

The Tenant (477). 

This body is my house — it is not I; 

Herein I sojourn until, in some far sky, 

I lease a fairer dwelling, built to last 
Till all the carpentry of time is past. 

When from my high place viewing this lone star. 
What shall I care where those poor timbers are? 
What though the crumbling walls turn dust and loam, 
I shall have left them for a larger home. 

What though the rafters break, the stanchions rot. 
When earth has dwindled to a glimmering spot! 
When thou, clay cottage, fallest, I’ll immerse 
My long-cramped spirit in the universe. 

Through uncomputed silences of space 
I shall yearn upward to the leaning Face 
The ancient heavens will roll aside for me. 

As Moses monarch’d the dividing sea, 

This body is my house; It is not I, 

Triumphant in this faith I live and die. 

— Frederic Lawrence Knowles. 


To a Waterfowl (478). 

There is a Power whose care 
Teaches thy way along that pathless coast, 

The desert and illimitable air, 

Lone wandering, but not lost. 

All day thy wings have fanned, 

At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere, 
Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land, 
Though the dark night is near. 

And soon that toil shall end; 

Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest, 
And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend. 
Soon, o’er thy sheltered nest. 

Thou’rt gone, the abyss of heaven 
Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my heart 
Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given, 
And shall not soon depart. 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


232 


He who, from zone to zone. 

Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight. 
In the long way that I must tread alone 
Will lead my steps aright. 

— Bryant. 


Faith (479). 

If I could feel my hand, dear Lord, in Thine, 

And surely know 

That I was walking in the light divine, 

Through weal or woe; 

If I could hear Thy voice in accents sweet 
But plainly say, 

To guide my trembling, groping, wandering feet, 
“This is the way.” 

I would so gladly walk therein, but now 
I cannot see. 

Oh, give me, Lord, the faith humbly to bow — 

And trust in Thee! 

There is no faith in seeing. Were we led 
Like children here, 

And lifted over rock and river bed, 

No care, no fear. 

We should be useless in the busy throng, 

Life’s work undone, 

Lord, make us brave and earnest, true and strong, 
Till heaven is won. 


— S. K. Bolton, 


RESIGNATION— TRUST 


233 


TEXTS AND TREATMENT HINTS. 

“Thy Will Be Done."— Matt. 6:10 (480). 

When the heart has been wrung by anguish, when the waters have 
overwhelmed us, the proud waters have gone over our soul, when we have 
been beaten back and trampled down and when the sun has darkened 
in our sky and the stars forgot their shining, in the wreck of a career, 
in the blight of hope, when the unforeseen and the unlooked-for has 
made mock of our ambitions, when a lingering sickness has taken out 
of our life that which alone made life worth living, or death robbed us 
of that which has given us the best joy we have known on earth and 
left us, as it seemed, friendless, unpitied, homeless in the night, then 
we have tried to stay our faltering faith on God with this prayer of 
fathomless pain: Thy will be done. — Aked. 

“Though He Slay Me Yet Will I Trust Him."— Job 13:15 (481). 

Those who pray truly are usually tested severely. Once, while under 
great mental depression, a minister was reading a good book, when his 
eye fell upon this sentence, quoted from Luther: “I would run into 
the arms of Christ, though He stood with a drawn sword in His hand." 
The thought came bolting into his mind, “So will I too;" and those words 
of Job occurred immediately, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in 
Him." — (Job 13:15) His burden slipped away, and his soul was filled 
with joy and peace in believing. 

Comfort Texts (482). 

“As thy days so shall thy strength be.” (Deut. 33:25). 

“The joy of the Lord is your strength” (Neh. 8:10). 

“Seek the Lord and His strength” (Psa. 105:4). 

“The Lord is my strength” (Hab. 3:19). 

“In quietness and confidence shall be your strength” (Isa. 30:15). 

“The Lord shall renew their strength” (Isa. 40:31). 

“I will go in the strength of the Lord God” (Psa. 71:16). 

“And He strengthened me” (Dan. 10:18). 

“Be strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might” (Eph. 6:10). 

“The Lord stood with me, and strengthened me” (2 Tim. 4:17). 

“Strengthened with might by His Spirit” (Eph. 3:19). 

“Through faith, out of weakness were made strong” (Heb. 11:34). 

“My strength is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9). 

“Their Redeemer is strong” (Jer. 50:34). 

“I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me” (Phil. 
4:13). — Sunday School Illustrator. 

“The Lord Is My Shepherd, I Shall Not Want" — Ps. 23:1 (483). 

After the fight at Chattanooga those who were sent to bury the 
slain are said to have come upon a dead Union boy in a sitting posture 
— his back against a tree and in his lap a pocket-Bible lying open at the 


234 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


twenty-third Psalm. How, on the instant, does this young man change for 
us the whole aspect of that battlefield ! Before the battle we were thinking 
of the opposing armies only as two great wholes, as but two terribly 
destructive machines — the sole question at issue being which of the two 
were the more likely to out-match, out-fight, and out-destroy the other. 
But how completely is the whole struggling mass now resolved into 
distinct and rounded personalities; how flashed upon us the conviction 
that amid all the roar, confusion and carnage of battle, each soldier 
stands just as clearly apart to the All-seeing Eye as in the stillness and 
solitariness of the closet of secret prayer. How blessedly real it makes 
for us the fact of a close, personal relationship to Christ, and the possi- 
bility that this relationship may be for each and every soul a union of 
intimate confidence; of sweet and indissoluble affection. How it raises 
us above the dreary monotony of all commonest things, lifting each soul 
to the sacredness of individual fellowship with the one all-merciful Father, 
the ever-loving Saviour, the all-comforting Spirit. Instead of the noun 
of multitude, “mankind,” so cheerless in its vagueness and generality, 
how it gives us, in its stead, the warm, loving personality, giving us to 
Christ by our names and giving Christ by all His appropriate names to 
us; inviting us whenever we will to turn away from all the neglects, in- 
justices, envies and cruelties of the world, and with the upward glance 
of the loving child’s confidence to say: “The Lord is my shepherd; I 
shall not want. He leadeth me by the still waters. He restoreth my 
soul. Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” 

The Bible is, in this respect, just such a book as we might expect 
it to be, if it be indeed a message from God to us His children. 

It was the sad lament of one of the greatest of heathen philosophers 
that “God does not care for individual men.” But we see everywhere in 
the Bible that God does care for individual men. — Selected. 

“In Patience Possess Ye Your Souls.” — Luke 21:19 (484). 

Lives have been wrecked, homes made unhappy and desolate, be- 
cause of the neglect to cultivate this important virtue. In every position 
and circumstance of life it is needed. 

“Ah! more than martyr’s aureole, 

And more than hero’s heart of fire, 

We need the humble strength of soul, 

That daily toils, and ills require.” 

We are told that our Heavenly Father is a “God of Patience.” Of 
Him we can ask at all times power to be patient, assured that we will 
receive such. Aside from our Lord and Savior, there is no character 
who illustrates so fully the value and result of patience as that of Job. 
“Ye have heard of the patience of Job.” . . . Abraham, after he had pa- 
tiently endured, obtained the promise. 

“Not to him who rashly dares. 

But to him who nobly bears, 

Is the victor’s garland sure.” 


RESIGNATION— TRUST 


235 


In the revelation given to St. John, the divine, we find that to the 
angel or minister of the church of Thyatira is given the seal of approval 
for patience; and to the angel of the church of Philadelphia, a promise 
to keep from temptation, “because thou hast kept the word of my pa- 
tience.” “The patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit.” “Be 
patient toward all” is the exhortation given by the great apostle. — Selected. 

“Then Shalt Thou Lift Up Thy Face Without Spot”— Job 11:15 (485) 

“The clouds are always beautiful and clear, no matter what Is in the 
house. Just look up, mamma!” said a little girl to her mother, as they 
stood on the doorstep of the dingy factory tenement. The mother looked 
up. There were the billowy white clouds, and as she looked at them she 
forgot the dirt and discomfort around her. It is a good thing to look up. 
God is in the heaven above us, and when we see the clouds let us remem- 
ber that they are around about His throne. 

i There is a lesson in the Bible about the uplifted face. “Then shalt 
thou lift up thy face without spot.” This phrase, found in the Book of 
Job, is extremely beautiful as a figure of speech, and at the same time 
very expressive of certain facts in religious experience. It expresses 
the attitude of a soul at peace with God according to the provisions and 
terms of the Gospel. Confidence is implied in this utterance, for a man 
without peace and confidence will hang his head with guilt and shame, 
not lift it up without spot. It would be well for us to cultivate more 
the grace of the uplifted face, the look of trust and confidence in our 
heavenly Father. He is good; His attitude towards us is loving; Hi3 
acts are wise. 

“I Will Bless the Lord at all Times”— Ps. 34:1 (486). 

Who said that? Surely he must have been one remarkably exempt 
from the troubles of life? Not so. He was one whose life was fuller 
of strange vicissitudes, and more loaded with trials than that of almost 
any other at his side. Great mercies he had to speak of, great deliver- 
ances, great honors, great joys; but he could also tell of great sorrows, 
great calamities, great reverses of fortune, great punishments for his 
sins. And yet, with all these full in view, he could say, “I will bless the 
Lord at all times,” in my darkest as well as in my brightest hours, in 
my weary wanderings as well as in my peaceful home, in my sorest 
chastenings as well as in my purest joys; and it was not simply “I 
will bless the Lord.” — Knight. 

“I Know Whom I Have Believed, and Am Persuaded that He Is Able 
to Keep that which I Have Committed unto Him against 
that day.”— 2 Timothy 1:12 (487). 

The apostles did not, like some of their boasted successors, claim 
infallibility. It was enough for them that their Master could make no 
mistake. They never supposed that He had handed down to them His 
unerring vision and judgment. St. Paul often confessed, as all great 
men do, that his knowledge was woefully limited. He acknowledged 


236 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


that the highest inspiration gave a man only very partial vision, that 
in speaking of religious things he himself could not always trust his 
own judgment, and that he was often like one groping in the dark. He 
was not certain of everything or of a great many things. There were 
many rooms in his house of faith into which the light had never 
shined; things mysterious, things doubtful, things open to question. We 
know in part, and we see through a glass, darkly. His customary lan- 
guage was, “We walk by faith and not by sight,” but here and there he 
found rock from which nothing could move him, and declared as he 
does here, “I know.” — Selected. 


“Let not Your Heart Be Troubled”. — John 14:1 (488). 

One form of sorrow mentioned by the New Testament is the sorrow 
occasioned by bereavement. Sin creates the one, and death is the cause 
of the other. The Lord annihilates the gulf that was created by guilt. 
What can He do with the awful vacancy created by death? His com- 
fort is peculiarly immediate and strong and sweet. And how does He 
comfort us? First of all, I think He comforts us in the dark sorrow of 
bereavement by helping us to look out of the window of love. 

I. Now, the window of love looks out upon the past, upon the days 
we lived together with the loved one before bereavement came. And the 
gracious ministry of the window of love is this — that it only reveals to us 
the lovely. All that was beautiful in the loved one shines out in the 
light. All the frailties and infirmities are seen in new views. Some 
beauties we have never noticed appear in this comforting retrospect. 
Every mourner in Christ Jesus knows the love-window and the gracious 
things that are unveiled for the comfort of the soul. 

II. And there is a second window to which the Holy Spirit leads us 
in our grief. This is the window of faith, and it looks out upon the 
present. We gaze through this window upon our broken, desolate, 
lonely life, and we see footprints on the road — nay, we see the Lord 
Himself. There is given to us an intimate sense of Providential near- 
ness and guidance. We are endowed with the assurance that God i3 
awake and tenderly at work. When we look through the faith-window, 
life is seen not as chaos but as order, and its happenings are not the 
blind issues of chance, but the outcome of the graciously tender plan 
of our Father in heaven. 

III. And there is a window to which the comforter takes the soul, un- 
veiling to him prospe-cts that bring exquisite comfort. This is the 
window of hope, and it looks out upon the morrow, and through that 
window we see our Father’s house with the many mansions. We see 
the intimacy of its fellowship: “Where I am there ye shall be also.” 
We see the gathering together of the scattered family to be “forever with 
the Lord.” Through this window of hope we gaze “O’er moor and fen 
and crag and torrent,” and beyond all these we see the fair dawning 
in which the angel faces smile “which we have loved long since and lost 
a while.” 


RESIGNATION— TRUST 


237] 


The comfort which I have mentioned is very real, and every sor- 
rowing soul can obtain it in the treasury of grace. It is offered without 
money and without price. There is no other comfort for sorrows such 
as these. The one who sorrows for sin may see an opiate in the pleasure 
of the world, but he will awake again to the strained reality, and his 
grief will be more poignant than ever. And the one who sorrows in 
bereavement will exist in an ever-darkening prison unless there comes 
the comfort of the Light of life. Our Lord Jesus came “to comfort all 
that mourn.” “Earth has no sorrow, that heaven cannot heal,” — Dr. J. H. 
Jowett in the Christian World of London. 

“And if Christ Be Not Risen, Then Is Our Preaching Vain, and Your 
Faith Is Also Vain.”— 1 Cor. 15:14, 15 (489). 

What Comes of a Dead Christ? 

I. The first point the Apostle makes is this: that with the resur- 
rection of Jesus Christ the whole gospel stands or falls. 

II. Secondly, with the resurrection of Jesus Christ stands or falls 
the character of the witnesses. 

III. Again, with the resurrection of Jesus Christ stands or falls the 
faith of the Christian. 

IV. Lastly, with the resurrection of Christ stands or falls the 
heaven of His servants. — Alexander Maclaren, D. D. 

“But When the Morning Was now Come, Jesus Stood on the 
Shore”— John 21:4 (490). 

“Morning” and “Jesus.” Write a poem on these words — “Morning” 
and “Jesus.” Or put the two words, and just see the rapid variations 
of human life — “night” and “nothing,” “morning” and “Jesus.” That 
is the Christian life, and in as far as we are vitally Christian do we 
enter into the mystery of these apparent contradictions. Meet a Christ- 
ian man under certain circumstances, and you will see as it were upon 
his countenance, “night” and “nothing.” You say, “How gloomy he is, 
and how much depressed! There is no spring in him, no tunefulness, no 
inspiration; only ‘night’ and ‘nothing.’” See him the next day, or month, 
or year, and his countenance glows like the morning, and his voice is 
tuneful, and he brings with him an atmosphere pure, and vital and 
vitalizing. That is Christian life — sometimes very low, but always in 
Christ and always on the rock. Dwell on these sweet and tuneful words 
a little longer. Look at them, because the eye will help the ear. — Joseph 
Parker, D. D. 

“After that Ye Have Suffered a Little While.” 1 Peter 5:10 (491). 

Suffering is inevitable. Through much tribulation we must pass to 
our reward on high. No cross, no crown; no Gethsemane, no emptied 
grave; no cup of sorrow, no chalice of joy; no cry of forsakenness, no 
portion with the great, or spoil with the strong. All who suffer are not 
necessarily glorified; but none are glorified who have not somehow suf- 


238 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


fered. We must drink of His cup, and be baptized with His baptism, 
if we would sit right and left of the King. The comet that stands longest 
nearest to the sun must have plunged furthest into the abyss. 

Let sufferers take heart! If only their sufferings are not self- 
inflicted; if they do not result froom their own mistakes and sins; if 
they arise from that necessary antagonism to sin and the present world 
into which close following of the Crucified must necessarily bring any 
one of us; if they are borne, not only submissively, but with the heart’s 
choice, as of those that delight to do the will of God — then each pang 
is a milestone marking their way onwards to the goal of light and glory. 

Suffering is necessary to our characters. — The Apostle does not for 
a moment wish his converts spared from the ordeal. Nothing short of 
necessity would ever lead God to expose us to the fire. But in no other 
way can our truest bliss be achieved. In no other school-house are the 
lessons of obedience so acquired as in that kept by sorrow. The Lord 
Himself was once a scholar there, and carved His name on the hard and 
comfortless boards. In no other ordeal can we lose so much dross; drop 
so much chaff, learn so much of our own nothingness; be drawn so close 
to His companionship; or be taught such true estimates of the compar- 
ative values of things, weighing the present against the future, till we 
feel that it is not worthy to be compared with the glory to be revealed. 

Suffering is limited. — At the most, it is for but a little while. Re- 
member how often the Lord Jesus repeated the words, it is only “a little 
while” (John 16:16-19). It was a note on which His fingers lingered, as 
if loth to leave it. Compared with all the future, the longest life of suf- 
fering is only for a moment; and, contrasted with the weight of glory, 
the heaviest trials are light. Let us not look at the things which are 
seen, but at those which are not seen. The hills which would daunt the 
traveller seem diminutive when they are seen lying about the feet of 
some soaring Alp. Weeping can only stay for the brief summer night, 
and in the early twilight must hasten veiled away; because joy cometh 
in the morning, bringing the herald-beam of the long, happy summer day, 
on which night can never fall or draw her dusky veil. — Rev. F. B. Meyer. 



IX. PROBATION: READINESS FOR 
THE SUMMONS. 

REFLECTIONS AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 

Jonathan Edwards' Resolutions (492). 

Resolved, To live with all my might while I do live; 

Resolved, Never to lose one moment of time, but improve it in the 
most profitable way I possibly can; 

Resolved, Never to do anything which I should despise or think 
meanly of in another. 

Resolved, Never to do anything out of revenge; 

Resolved, Never to do anything which I should be afraid to do if it 
were the last hour of my life. 

The True Foundation (493). 

It will not do for any man to build his hopes of heaven on anything 
but the foundation of an implicit faith in the atoning work of Jesus 
Christ. The story is told of a man who dreamed that he constructed a 
ladder from earth to heaven, and that, whenever he did a good deed, his 
ladder went up two feet. When he did a very good deed his ladder 
went higher, and when he gave away large sums of money to the 
poor, it went up further still. By-and-by, it went out of sight, and as years 
rolled on, it went up, he thought, past the clouds clear into heaven. The 
man expected that when he died he would step off his ladder into heaven, 
but he heard a voice thunder from Paradise, “He that climbeth up some 
other way, the same is a thief and a robber.” Down the man came, lad- 
der and all, and he awoke. He then realized that if he wanted to be 
saved he must obtain salvation in another way than by good deeds, and 
he took that other w r ay, which leads past the atoning cross of Jesus 
Christ. — Selected. 

Preparations (494). 

This life is but a preparation for the eternal years. When we con- 
template life after death from the life before death, a belief in immor- 
tality makes the present life more important. — E. F. Sanderson. 

Ready (495). 

A writer in a recent number of the British Weekly describes the last 
meeting of Principal Rainy and Dr. Alexander McLaren, in the spring of 
1906. It was at the assembly of the United Free Church that they met, 
and sat for a while together. When they went out a bystander heard 
their farewell. “Good-by, Rainy,” said the younger man. “Good-by,” 
was the reply of Rainy as they shook hands. “It won’t be long now,” 
said McLaren. “No, it can’t be long now. Good-by.” The Jerusalem 
that is above was in their view, and the peace of it, then very attractive, 
now laps them round. 


240 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


A Reminder (496). 

The late Cardinal Vaughan wore an iron bracelet on his left arm 
during the latter part of his life. On the inside of the bracelet were 
sharp spikes. When the strange ornament was finally adjusted it was 
fastened by means of a pair of pliers so that it could not be taken off. 
After his death it was cut off the arm. 

Farsightedness (497). 

Farsightedness and nearsightedness are both defects in human eye- 
sight. The same rule obtains in daily living. The man who looks 
forever into the far future does not see his nearest duty; and the man 
who sees only the daily routine close about him cannot advance toward 
larger things. To see life steadily and “see it whole” should be each 
man’s endeavor. — Selected. 

Absorbed in Trifles (498). 

Awhile ago the newspaper told that a skeleton had been found in 
the Alps. It proved to be the skeleton of a tourist who was anxious to 
secure that much-coveted Alpine flower, the edelweiss, but in the attempt 
to reach it the climber had slipped, with fatal consequences. The 
flower was evidently in his hand when he slipped. But what did it profit 
him to gain the flower and lose his life? What will it profit you to 
grasp your prize and lose your life? — W. L. Watkinson. 

Travelers (499). 

People who pass the Rothschild mansion in the fashionable quarter 
of London often notice that the end of one of the cornices is unfinished. 
One is likely to ask, “Could not the richest man in the world afford to 
pay for that cornice, or is the lack due simply to carelessness?” The 
explanation is a very simple yet suggestive one when it is known. 
Lord Rothschild is an orthodox Jew, and every pious Jew’s house, tra- 
dition says, must have some part unfinished, to bear testimony to the 
world that its occupant is only, like Abraham, a pilgrim and a stranger 
upon the earth. The incomplete cornice on the mansion seems to say 
to all who hurry by in the streets, bent on amassing worldly wealth, or 
going along with the maddening crowd in the paths of folly: “This is 
not Lord Rothschild’s home; he is traveling to eternity!” We too should 
remember that we are travelers. The good Dean Stanley left as an 
inscription to be placed on his tomb these words: “The end of a traveler 
on his way to Jerusalem!” — S. S. Times. 

Eleventh Hour Repentance (500). 

Let us not deceive ourselves about eleventh-hour repentance. For 
we do not die when and as we would arrange it. “Men think all men 
mortal but themselves.” Men are everywhere arranging to live, not die. 
They are snatched away from the midst of their ordinary vocation, busy 
about everything except getting ready to die. Thousands die by accident. 
Thousands more lie so wrapped in unconsciousness or racked by delirium 
that no voice of exhortation can reach them. Thousands more cannot, 


PROBATION: READINESS FOR THE SUMMONS 


241 


in their last conscious hours, summon up their energies to think or pray, 
while others are terrorized beyond the capacity for repentance, and seem 
to be able to harbor no emotion except that of despair. 

“The Central America,” a huge vessel from California, foundered at 
sea some time in the fifties. A few survivors were picked up by the 
crew of a vessel which, stealing through the darkness, was startled to 
hear voices from the waves. These survivors told a strange tale. When 
all hope was gone the men rushed to drink. The vessel had on board 
many successful gold diggers. Of these some in despair flung their 
gold wildly about the deck, others as wildly scrambled for it. Others 
Btill loaded their belts and their pockets with it and went down like 
lead. The men were crazed; they did not know what they were doing. 
There was despair in every case; there was no thought of repentance. 

Life’s True Work and Motive (501). 

The fireman who risks his life to save someone in a burning build- 
ing, the member of the life-saving crew who battles with the waves 
to rescue a man from drowning, are not thinking of winning a medal 
from the government, but of saving a human being in peril. So the true 
servants of the Master, trying to reclaim and uplift the lost and helpless, 
are moved by pity for the souls of men instead of by any vision of a 
starry crown for themselves. “Upon His head are many diadems.” 
writes John of the glorified Christ, but it was not seeking these that our 
Lord came to earth to be a brother to humanity. — Forward. 

Christ or the World? (502). 

A very frank young woman said: “I would like to belong to the 
world while I am young and can enjoy life, and then when I am old I 
would like to belong to the Lord.” 

An eccentric man once built his house on the extreme western coast 
of Ireland, because, he said, that he wished to reside next to an American 
town. He did, in a sense, live next to one, and yet the Atlantic Ocean 
stretched between. So if we think we are so near being a Christian 
that we shall be counted in, and yet are serving our idols, we may know 
that an ocean wider and deeper than the Atlantic rolls between us and 
our Lord. We must belong to one or the other. — J. M. Bingham. 

Prepared to Die (503). 

The peace that belongs to a Christian prepared to meet Jesus at 
a moment’s notice, was strikingly shown at the recent railroad wreck 
on the New York Central at Batavia, N. Y. The people, who were trying 
to get the men from under the engine which was lying on its side upon 
the wrecked Pullman sleeper, heard calls for help, but could not find 
just where the man was lying until he waved a stick through a hole 
in the wreckage. As quickly as possible they raised him and lifted him 
out and carefully laid him upon an improvised cot. He said: “Tele- 
graph my brother in Detroit,” giving the name, street and number, “and 


242 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


tell him to tell my wife.” A moment later he said, with a look of quiet 
peace: “I am a Christian and I am not afraid to die.” They carried him 
to the hospital and a few hours later he had gone to meet the Judge 
of all the world. 


No Oil in Their Lamps (504). 

“They took no oil in their lamps.” They made no provision for 
the time of need which was fast approaching. They permitted earthly 
pleasures or cares to quiet their fears for the future. 

There is an old Eastern fable about a traveler in the Steppes who 
is attacked by a furious wild beast. To save himself the traveler gets in- 
to a dried-up well; hut at the bottom of it he sees a dragon with its 
jaws wide open to devour him. The unhappy man dares not get out 
for fear cf the wild beast, and dares not descend for fear of the dragon, 
so he catches hold of the branch of a wild plant growing in a crevice of 
the well. His arms soon grow tired, and he feels that he must soon 
perish, death waiting for him on either side. But he holds on still: and 
then he sees two mice, one black and one white, gnawing through the 
trunk of the wild plant, as they gradually and evenly make their way 
round it. The plant must soon give way, break off, and he must fall 
into the jaws of the dragon. The traveler sees this, and knows that he 
will inevitably perish; but, while still hanging on, he looks around him, 
and, finding some drops of honey on the leaves of the wild plant, he 
stretches out his tongue and licks them. After quoting this fable Tol- 
stoy quotes the opening chapters of Ecclesiastes as an expression of 
this Epicurean escape from the terrible plight in which people find 
themselves as they awaken to the fact of existence. The issue “consists 
in recognizing the hopelessness of life, and yet taking advantage of 
every good in it, in avoiding the sight of the dragon and mice, and in 
seeking the honey as best we can, especially where there is most 
of it ” 

Such is the way in which most people, who belong to the circle in 
which I move, reconcile themselves to their fate, and making living pos- 
sible. They know more of the good than the evil of life from the circum- 
stances of their position, and their blunted moral perceptions enable 

them to forget that all their advantages are accidental The dullness 

of their imaginations enables these men to forget what destroyed the 
peace of Buddha, the inevitable sickness, old age, and death, which 
tomorrow if not today must be the end of all their pleasures. — Selected. 

Life A Discipline (505). 

Sooner or later we find out that life is not a holiday, but a disci- 
pline. Earlier or later we all discover that the world is not a play- 
ground; it is quite clear God means it for a school. The moment we 
forget that, the puzzle of life begins. We try to play in school; The 
Master does not mind that so much for its own sake, for He likes to see 
His children happy, but in our playing we neglect our lessons. We do 
not see how much there is to learn, and we do not care, but our Master 
cares. He has a perfectly overpowering and inexplicable solicitude for 


PROBATION: READINESS FOR THE SUMMONS 


243 


our education; and because He loves us, He comes into the school some- 
times and speaks to us. He may speak very softly and gently, or very 
loudly. Sometimes a look is enough, and we understand it, like Peter, 
and go out at once and weep bitterly. Sometimes the voice is like a 
thunder clap startling a summer night. But one thing we may be sure 
of — the task He sets us to is never measured by our delinquency. The 
discipline may seem far less than our desert, or even to our eye ten 
times more. But it is not measured by these; it is measured by God’s 
love; measured solely that a scholar may be better educated when he 
arrives at his Father’s. The discipline of life is a preparation for meet- 
ing the Father. When we arrive there to “behold His beauty” we must 
have the educated eye; and that must be trained here. We must needs 
much practice — that we shall “see God.” That explains life — why God 
puts man in the crucible, and makes him pure by fire. — Herald & 
Presbyter, 

Time Halts Not (506). 

Time halts not! No; it bears thee with its ceaseless roll towards 
that eternity where hesitation will be forever ended. Death halts not, 
whose miserable tread is ever advancing alike upon the waiting saint 
and the poor sinner. Judgment halts not, but moves forward to the 
appointed day, close in the rear of the last enemy. What is to be the 
duration of your hesitation? You propose and expect to make the 
needed preparation for eternity sometime this side of death. — Palmer. 

Missing Life's Best (507). 

A story runs of a young man who picked up a golden coin lying in the 
road. Ever after, as he walked along he kept his eyes fastened on the 
ground in hope of finding another. In the course of a long life he picked 
up a good deal of gold and silver, but in all these years he never saw 
the lovely flowers by the wayside, or grassy dell, or mountain peak 
and silver stream. He caught no glimpse of the blue heaven above or 
snowy clouds, like angel pillows, telling of the purity beyond. God’s 
stars came out and shone like gems of everlasting hope, but he kept 
his eyes upon the mud and filth in which he sought the treasure; and 
when he died, a rich old man, he knew this lovely earth only as a dirty 
road in which to pick up money as he walked along. 

Be Ready For The Call (508). 

Some years ago, when Mr. Moody was holding his great meetings 
in Glasgow, two miners from Coatbridge came into the Inquiry Room; 
one of them sincerely anxious for his soul’s salvation, the other careless 
and disposed to scoff at his friend for his seriousness, yet accompany- 
ing him into the after meeting. The next day there was a terrible acci- 
dent in the mine where the friends were working in the same shift. The 
roof of the mine had fallen in, crushing into splinters the supporting 
timbers, and underneath a huge piece of coal one of the two miners 
lay fatally injured and dying. It was the serious and penitent one of the 


244 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


two. When it was seen that there was no hope of extricating him, he 
called a few of his mates who had been laboring to get him from under 
the fallen mass, and spoke to them about their souls. 

“Mates, you know I have been a bad man and an irreligious one; 
but last night I gave my heart to the Lord Jesus Christ, who has for- 
given all my sins. I am dying now, and I would to God that you were all 
as I am in this hour — at peace with God, with all my sins forgiven me.” 
Then, turning to his friend who had been with him in the Inquiry Room, 
he said to him, especially, “Oh, Willum, a’m so ‘glad I settled it a’ last 
nicht Willum, man, it’s gran’ to be forgiven. Tak’ it yoursel’, man, 
and tak’ it the noo\” And with this confession he w r ent home to Christ. 
— Pentecost. 


“True Living (509). 

Some one once asked a well known -author to state, in a few words, 
his idea of what is the secret of a true life. He responded, “Inviting 
into it the best things.” Could it be more happily expressed? Can 'there 
be anything more attractive than a life that maintains this attitude, of 
inviting and welcoming the best things? And -may we not adapt this 
thought to the vocation of the preacher and the teacher? What "is true 
teaching, if not an invitation to the best things? But it must be in the 
way of invitation, and not of command. The process of uprooting and 
destroying the weeds is entirely different from that of cultivating the 
plant. In the one case, violence, in the other, gentleness; in the one, 
severity, in the other, patience; in the one, condemnation to death, in 
the other, nourishment to life. Men are not coerced into being good. 
They must be shown the way, and invited, not driven, to walk in it. 

The gospel of Jesus Christ is a gospel of invitation. “Come” is the 
keynote, and it is sounded over and over again. To be sure the Saviour 
could be severe when the occasion demanded. He could call a man 
a hypocrite and a whited sepulcher to his face if need be, and He could 
wield a whip of small cords very effectively; but in the most of His work 
and in the great body of His teaching there runs the sweet-toned chord 
of invitation. He is the leader, the sympathizer, the guide, but not the 
driver. This is not the only reason, but it is one cf the reasons, why His 
gospel, which He did not even commit to writing, and which had such 
an obscure beginning, has so grown and widened in the hearts of men 
that it promises soon to fill the whole earth. — The Advance. 

Opportunities (510). 

The issues of life concentrate themselves into a few special points 
of opportunity. The success and failure of life depend upon whether 
these opportunities are grasped when they present themselves or 
whether they are neglected and permitted to pass. Life’s greatest oppor- 
tunities are not like the great ships which sail from the chief ports of 
the world, which sail and come again and sail at stated intervals from 
the same ports. The great chances touch once at the pier of our lives, 
throw out the planks of opportunity over which our feet may pass, ring 
their signal bells in our ears, and then sail out of the harbor and away 
into the eternal sea and never come again. The little chances linger 


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PROBATION: READINESS FOR THE SUMMONS 


245 


and return, but the great chances come and go and never come again. 
. . . If with illumined sight we could look back over the lives of the 

people by whom we are surrounded, how many great and rich oppor- 
tunities would we see that they have permitted to drift by them unim- 
proved! — J. T. McFarland. 

Heeding The Divine Voice (511). 

We can’t choose happiness either for ourselves or for another: 
we can’t tell where that will lie. We can only choose whether we will 
indulge ourselves in the present moment or whether we will renounce 
that for the sake of obeying the divine voice within us — for the sake 
of being true to all the motives that sanctify our lives. — George Eliot. 

Ready For The Summons (512). 

Our ship was bound for Constantinople. About one hundred miles 
to the east of Malta the wind dropped, and for three days we experi- 
enced a dead calm. The sails idly flapped against the masts as the 
ship slowly rolled from side to side. I had gone below to dinner with 
my three fellow midshipmen. We had just commenced our pea-soup 
and salt pork when the captain’s voice was heard, “All hands on deck. 
Furl sails.” And looking down to our cabin he said, “Now youngsters, 
up on deck. Look alive!” 

“What could this order mean? Why, there’s no wind. Not a 
cloud to be seen. Wish there was.” We soon had our wish. It was 
no use discussing the “why.” We had to obey. My work was to furl 
the mainroyal sail. When up aloft, I saw a jet black cloud on the 
western horizon. It rose rapidly. Beneath it was a white line. We 
were evidently in for a white squall. Hurriedly the sails were furled. 
By this time one-third of the sky was clouded over. The captain and 
officers were looking anxious. 

About half a mile astern of us was a brig. All her sails were set. 
Evidently the coming squall had not been noticed, and was unprepared 
for. Only a few minutes before the squall struck her, we saw the crew 
hurrying aloft to furl the sails. At that moment a flash of lightning 
struck the brig, and we heard afterwards that four of the crew, who 
were furling the foretopsail, were struck and fell to the deck, charred 
corpses. The next moment we lost sight of her and thought she had 
foundered. A minute more and the hurricane struck us. 

How was it our captain had expected the tempest, when there was 
no cloud to be seen, and no wind to be felt? Passing the barometer in 
his cabin he noticed that the mercury was rapidly falling, and was 
sure a storm was coming, and hence the order, “All hands on deck. 
Furl all sails.” Here were two vessels near each other, yet how differ- 
ently commanded! If on a voyage, in which ship and under which of 
these captains would you like to be? Your reply at once is, “Under 
the captain on the lookout, and in the ship prepared for the storm.” 

Apply this true narrative to yourself. We are on a voyage from 
Time to Eternity. A greater tempest is nearing. Your sky may be 
just now unclouded. No storm in sight. You may be saying, “Take 


246 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry” (Lk. 12:19). ‘‘Foolish one, this 
night thy soul (life) shall (or may) be required of thee.” — Scottish 
Monthly Visitor. 


Two Surprises (513). 

There are two surprises, one may venture to think, which await 
us in the day when the Lord returns to make his reckoning with his 
servants. One the place of honor given to plain, simple men and 
women, who put a great spirit of service into humble opportunities; 
the other the tragic shame of multitudes of feeble, self-centered, re- 
spectable people who buried their talents in dull and complacent routine. 
— Cosmo Gordon Lang. 

Observing The Tide (514). 

At one of the big summer resorts on the west coast of England, 
where hundreds of bathers enjoy the surf, there is a watchman sta- 
tioned in a tower on the roof of the hotel. His sole duty is to observe 
the tide. After the tide has turned, and is on the ebb, there comes a 
time when the undertow will sweep the strongest swimmers from their 
feet, carrying them beneath the surface and out to sea. The watchman 
knows when the dangerous time is at hand, and he rings a great bell 
to warn all concerned. Across the miles of sand beach the peal of 
the danger bell goes. When the bathers hear it, they turn at once to 
the shore. If one should say, ‘‘Just five minutes more of this fun, 
and then I will go out,” he would be covenanting with death, for the 
bell demands instant obedience. There have been cases of disobedience, 
and always the result has been loss of life. Notices are placed in 
conspicuous positions calling attention to the importance of instantly 
leaving the water when the bell rings, and announcing that the refusal 
to do this clears the authorities of blame in case of accident. 

In the moral life of all, the warning of conscience sounds the 
danger note. It bids us seek safety. The undertow of temptation is 
not to be trifled with. Security lies in avoiding it, under the warning 
of the voice of conscience. When we refuse to obey, disaster will 
follow, and the loss will be our own fault. — The Quiver. 

“I Theekit Ma Hoosie In The Calm Weather” (515). 

All day long the snow T had fallen, as if with quiet, steady purpose. 
As the light faded, the wind rose, and rose till the night was one of 
the wildest. In each little house on the countryside the inmates knew 
that they were cut off from their neighbors, and that that night there 
could be neither coming nor going. Light after light in the little vil- 
lage went out, and all was dark. Yet, though it was now near midnight, 
there was one window — had there been any one but God to see it — 
in which still shone a light. It was in the farmhouse high on the 
hillside. For within an old man lies dying. Late in the evening h6 
had taken a turn for the worse, and the daughter began to be afraid, 
knowing that on such a night she could send for no one, either doctor 
or minister, and feared she might have to face the Angel alone. Hour 
after hour she watched and waited. She looked on the gray locks that 


PROBATION: READINESS FOR THE SUMMONS 


247 


had once been black as the raven, on the pale cheeks once red as 
berries, on the strong, straight nose that still spoke to her of all his 
strength and uprightness. Never again, she murmured to herself, would 
she see him in the little church, bearing the vessels of the Lord — the 
tallest, dearest figure among all. 

“Father,” she said at length, “wull I read a chapter to ye?” 

But the old man was in sore pain, and only moaned. She rose, 
however, and got the Book and opened it. 

“Father,” she said again, “what chapter wull I read to ye?” 

“Na, na, lassie,” he said, “the storm’s up noo; I theekit (thatched) 
my hoosie in the calm weather„” 

And thereafter she waited without fear. — J. X. L., in the British 
Weekly. 


High Standards (516). 

No human being has ever attained to such high standards of living 
that there was nothing higher to work for. What a blessing this is! 
For there is no such joy in life as the reaching out after high standards 
and working toward them. Those who are content to live by any lower 
standard than the highest that they can conceive of, know nothing of 
the real zest and joy of life, of course. “Aren’t your high standards 
sometimes a strain?” was asked of a man who was making an effort 
to move toward such standards. “No, indeed,” was the instant reply; 
“it’s low standards that make the strain.” Those who are closest to 
God show the real strain in life is the tug of pulling away from God. 
The more nearly we get into oneness with Him and His will, the more 
completely we have God and the universe working with us, instead 
of against us. It is the way of the transgressor that is hard. Christ’s 
yoke is the only strain-easing harness we can ever wear. But we 
can always discover ways of fitting our lives into it more perfectly, 
and this is His never-ceasing invitation to greater joy. — Examiner. 

The Whole Matter Settled (517). — The child of God who has settled 
the question of salvation may well rest in quietness, knowing that all 
is well. The man whose future is a great uncertainty is guilty of folly 
if he lies down at ease and thrusts his peril from his mind. 

No Difference (518). 

To us all, under average conditions, come the same strength of 
youth, the same decay of old age. And after the usual span of years 
we are returned punctually to mother earth. 

Scepter and crown must tumble down; 

And in the dust be equal laid 

With the poor crooked scythe and spade. 

While we are above ground, nature deals out a good deal of equality 
amongst us. The qualities of things are entirely democratic. If an em- 
peror runs his head against a stone wall he will get from it precisely 
the same reception as if he were a laborer. A rope will hang you or 


248 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


water will drown you without the slightest reference to your social 
position. An orange will taste the same in the mouth of a millionaire 
as in that of a bootblack. If there is any difference it will be in 
favor of the bootblack. Sea-sickness will upset a duke in the same 
brutal way as a day-tripper. In the king’s palace as in the shepherd’s 
hut love and hate, fear and hope, the joy of achievement and the pang 
of disappointment are the same things, and make themselves felt just 
in the same way. We might trace the similarity in a thousand ways. 
This is the democracy, the equality of nature. — J. Brierly. 

Caring For The Vineyard (519). 

The story is told of a man of large wealth who lived most of the 
year in a country home among the hills of Vermont, in America. All 
his inheritance and surroundings were those of culture and luxury. All 
the temptations of wealth drew him toward ease and selfishness. But 
instead of that he was known in the little church of the place, and 
throughout the neighborhood, as a self-sacrificing, hard-working, con- 
secrated Christian. One day a minister who visited the church asked 
him how he came to throw himself so heartily into Christian work. 
His answer was quaint but striking: 

“When I became a Christian, and began to read my Bible with 
appreciation of its meaning, I read that I was called into the vineyard 
of the Lord; and I made up my mind at once that I was not called there 
to eat grapes, but to hoe, and I’ve been trying to hoe ever since!” 

The man with the hoe is needed in every church. Those Christians 
who come into the Lord’s vineyard and have no idea of doing anything, 
are usually in the majority. “I’ve joined the church,” said such a man 
to his pastor, “and I feel that I am saved. But you’ll have to excuse 
me from coming to prayer meetings, or taking up Sunday-school work. 
I’m too busy.” All he wanted was the grapes. He let other members 
do the hoeing. How much blessing and strength does a Christian like 
that get? How much are we getting — and is the reason of our lack 
entirely unconnected with a lack of hoeing? — Selected. 

Aim High (520). 

Some men are afraid of being too religious. What we need today 
is men who believe deep down in their souls what they profess. The 
world is tired and sick of sham. Let your whole heart be given up 
to God’s service. Aim high. God wants us all to be his ambassadors. 
It is a position higher than that of any monarch on earth to be a 
herald of the cross, but you must be filled with the Holy Spirit. A 
great many people are afraid to be filled with the Spirit of God — 
afraid of being called fanatics. You are not good for anything until 
the world considers you a fanatic. Fox said that every Quaker ought 
to shake the country ten miles around. What does the Scripture say? 
“One shall chase a thousand, and two shall put ten thousand to flight.”, 
It takes about a thousand to chase one now. Why? Because they are 
afraid of being too religious. What does this world want today? Men — • 
men that are out and out for God and not half-hearted in their allegiance 
and service. — Moody. 


PROBATION: READINESS FOR THE SUMMONS 


249 


Our Business Is To Live (521). 

At a private meeting of friends, on one occasion, George Whitefield, 
after referring to the difficulties attending the gospel ministry, said he 
was weary of the burdens of the day, and was glad that in a short 
time his work would be done, and he should depart to be with Christ. 
All present owned to having the same feeling, with the exception of 
Mr. Tennant. On seeing this, Mr. Whitefield, tapping him on the knees, 
said, “Well, Brother Tennant, you are the oldest man among us; do 
you not rejoice to think that your time is so near at hand when you 
will be called home?” Mr. Tennant replied that he had no wish about 
it. Being pressed for something more definite, he added, “I have noth- 
ing to do with death. My business is to live as long as I can, and as 
well as I can, and serve my Master as faithfully as I can, until He shall 
think proper to call me home.” — S. S. Times. 

Change Revealing the Unchanging (522). 

It is maddening to think of the sure decay and dissolution of all 
human strength, beauty, wisdom, unless that thought brings with it 
immediately, like a pair of coupled stars, of which the one is bright 
and the other dark, the corresponding thought of that which does no£ 
pass, and is unaffected by time and change. Just as reason requires 
some unalterable substratum, below all the fleeting phenomena of the 
changeful creation, a God who is the rock-basis of all, the staple to 
which all the links hang, so we are driven back and back and back, 
by the very fact of the transiency of the transient, to grasp, for a 
refuge and a stay, the permanency of the Permanent. 

But that conception of the meaning of each event that befalls us 
carries with it the conception of the whole of this life as being an 
education towards another. I do not understand how any man can 
bear to live here, and to do all his painful work, unless he thinks that 
by it he is getting ready for the life beyond, and that “nothing can 
bereave him of the force he made his own, being here.” The rough 
ore is turned into steel by being 

“PlungeS in 'baths of hissing tears. 

And heated hot with hopes and fears. 

And battered with the shocks of doom." 

And then — what then? Is an instrument thus fashioned and tempered 
and polished destined to be broken and “thrown as rubbish into the 
void?” Certainly not. If this life is education, as is obvious upon 
its very face, then there is a place where we shall exercise the facilities 
that we have acquired here, and manifest in loftier forms the characters 
which here we have made our own. — Alexander Maclaren, D. D. 

Casting Out The Rubbish (523). 

When we turn out our rooms, our libraries, we are continually 
astonished at the rubbish we have allowed to gather, rubbish that 
has crowded out so much better things. The life record often shows 
worse than that of the rooms. The supreme effort here should be to 


250 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


gather and find house room only for the best. It is thus we can make 
life interesting to the last moment. Some of the chief occupations 
today are occupations which store nothing. What inner accumulation 
comes from spending six nights in the week at bridge whist? A 
scientific ordering of life will be largely a science of accumulation. 
We shall settle with ourselves what things are to be sought and re- 
tained, and what treated as negligible. — J. Brierley, in Religion and 
Experience. 

Dust To Dust (524). 

In Schliemann’s excavations among the ruins of Mycenae, he came 
upon a royal tomb. The noble rank of its inmate was betrayed by 
many infallible tokens, but chiefly by a golden mask, a rusted sword 
and a dented shield. He concluded that this was the grave of Agamem- 
non, who was known as the King of Men. The mask was here, but 
where was the face? The sword was here, but where was the hand 
that held it? The shield was here but where was Agamemnon’s right 
arm? A handful of dust. 

Lighting The Lamps (525). 

A child riding with his mother on a railroad train noticed the 
porter lighting the lamps in the car in the middle of the day. “Why 
does he do that?” he asked his mother. “Wait a minute and you will 
see,” she answered. Presently, with no warning, the train dashed into 
a long, black tunnel, threading the mountain-top. No time then for 
lighting the lamps, but great need for their light. In the dash and roar 
of our hurrying lives, some of us are too busy to enter this Word for 
its light. In the dark of the day that is coming to us all, what shall 
we do?” — Selected. 

How Shall I Make the Most of Life? (526). 

“To be or not to be, that is the question,” quoted a young man 
who was utterly discouraged with life. The answer of his friend, was: 
“That is not the question at all. The question whether we are to be 
or not is a question we were not asked in the beginning, and have 
no right to raise. We can not discuss it with knowledge either of the 
joys that remain or the duties that are impending, nor yet the future 
shame that awaits us in some after life for the cowardly shirking of 
the burdens of this one. 

“ ‘To be or not to be’ is the question of the stage, propounded by 
a half-crazed character in a plot. The question of the real man on the 
stage of life, is, ‘Being, how shall I make the most of life?’ For we 
are, whether we like it or not; and we have no right but to be, and 
to be the most and best we can. Life is a discipline, it is not given 
us for our own pleasure alone, nor can any man live it or end it and 
affect himself alone. Life is the gift of God; and no man liveth unto 
himself, and no man dieth unto himself. Life is before you, long 
years of it, I hope. Duties are before you, earth is before you, with 
needs and hopes and sorrows, sorrows needing your strength and com- 


PROBATION: READINESS FOR THE SUMMONS 


251 


fort. Whether you shall be or not is God’s question, and for the pres- 
ent you know His answer. Your question is what you shall be, and 
how.” — The Youth’s Companion. 

Not Abusing the World (527). 

Living in a perishing world, we are to use it, not abuse it. All 
its forces we are to subdue, and to make them contribute to the com- 
fort and general well-being of society. This involves struggle, but the 
struggle is for man’s betterment. Everything is to serve us, if we are 
wise enough to see it so. Nothing is meaningless that God has made. 
The end of all things, in our relation to them, is that they be made 
subordinate to the opening-out of the soul’s best life here and forever. — 
The Lutheran Observer. 

The Loom of Life (528). 

It is a solemn thought, that every one of us carries about with 
him a mystical loom, and we are always weaving — weave, weave, weav- 
ing — this robe which we wear, every thought a thread of the warp, 
every action a thread of the weft. We weave it, as the spider doe3 
its web, out of its own entrails, if I might so say. We weave it, and 
we dye it, and we cut it, and we stitch it, and then we put it on and 

wear it, and it sticks to us A man is known by the 

company he keeps, and if your friends are picked out for other reasons, 
and their religion is no part of their attraction, it is not an unfair con- 
clusion that there are other things for which you care more than you do 
for faith in Jesus Christ and love to Him. If you deeply feel the bond 
that knits you to Christ, and really live near to Him, you will be near 
your brethren. You will feel that “blood is thicker than water,” and how- 
ever like you may be to irreligious people in many things, you will feel 
that the deepest bond of all knits you to the poorest, the most ignorant, 
the most unlike you in social position; — aye! and the most unlike you in 
theological opinion, that love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity. — Alex- 
ander Maclaren. 


The Flight of Time (529). 

He, who has found upon earth the city of his affections, and who 
with every onward step is only advancing toward a mist, may well 
look upon New Year’s day as a day of sorrow. Well may it be a dark 
and gloomy day to the man who, as a poor and humble pilgrim, is 
journeying to some royal city where he has not a single friend to wel- 
come his arrival or offer him the shelter of a roof. A poor and humble 
pilgrim am I; but, God be thanked, I know of One who long ago pre- 
pared for me a place. Hence it is that as I pass the milestones, each 
in succession becomes an altar, on which I present oblations of grati- 
tude and praise. There are many, I am aware, to whom the thought 
of flight of time is dispiriting. For me, I feel that He hath not given 
the spirit of fear, but of power.— 1 Tholuck, 


252 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


Wasting Life (530). 

I know an idiot boy who spent his life in spinning a top. No doubt 
that boy in his dim consciousness passed through all our mortal ex- 
periences. He had his good days and his bad days, and sometimes when 
he went home he had the experience of one who had won a battle, 
and sometimes the experience of one who had lost a battle. But there 
is something strangely incomplete and pathetic, spending the w r hole 
of life in spinning a top. But if there were no larger significance in 
life than “what shall we eat or what shall we drink, or wherewithal 
shall we be clothed,” if it were not more than that, then that idiot 
boy with his top was a striking picture of the race. What are we all 
doing but spinning tops? The tops vary, some are big and some are 
small; some have more gilt than others. What is the whole universe, 
but a great scene of empty top-spinning? The whirling suns, the stars 
in their courses, the planets in their movements — what are they all 
but colossal tops driven by idiotic forces, through eternities, in aimless 
cycles? Ah, if there be no intelligence in the world, no spirituality in 
its government, no great issue to it all, then it is a scene of pathetic 
emptiness, failure and despair! Only a larger interpretation of life 
will satisfy you. Life is utterly disappointing and incomplete without 
spiritual ideals, principles, ideas, and hopes. Man without spiritual 
instincts is always asking, Is life worth while? The man who whips 
his top for seventy years and keeps it going with sweat and blood, 
until the hum of the top dies in the silence of the graves, ought to 
be discontented with such a life. Discontent is the only natural thing 
in the universe if there are in life no deep moral purposes and no 
spiritual consequences; but it is another thing if the spiritual note is 
brought into it. The Church if Christ does not ask, “Is life worth 
living?” Life in the hand of a spiritual man is linked in with a larger 
education. It is a discipline out of which you come kings, and it leads 
you into a larger and imperishable inheritance. To the worldly man 
life is a blunder, a jest, a tragedy; to the spiritual man a discipline, a 
science, a triumph. The spiritual life that lasts is the real life. The 
spiritual instincts survive all changes. Without the spiritual instincts 
life is an unsolvable problem. But given to you the love of God, the 
sense of His wise government, and the assurance that the afflictions of 
the present time will work out for you a far more exceeding and an 
eternal v/eight of glory, and you will find rest unto your soul. — Con- 
densed from an article on “The Life Indeed,” by Dr. W. L. Watkinson, 
in Homiletic Review. 

Making the Most of Life (531). 

If you asked yourself or anyone else. Is it a matter of absolute 
indifference to God what results from your life? you would be an- 
swered that it is impossible to conceive of God at all without sup- 
posing that He desires every human life to serve some good purpose. 
This, at all events, is Christ’s view. This is what made His life what 
it was, influential to all time, and the unfailing source of the highest 
energy to all other lives. That is to say, He has given us the most 
cogent of all demonstrations that in proportion as we accept his view 


PROBATION: READINESS FOR THE SUMMONS 


r ') 


of the connection of our life with God shall we resemble Him in the 
utility and permanent result of all we do. It has become obvious that 
in the world of nature nothing is isolated and independent, that all 
nature is one w r hole, governed by one idea and fulfilling one purpose. 
Human lives are under the same law. No life is outside of the plan 
which comprehends the whole; every life contributes something to the 
fulfillment of the great purpose all are to serve. Our Lord tells us 
that this purpose is in the mind of God, and that He judges us by our 
fulfillment or nonfulfillment of His will. And that we should be re- 
luctant to bring forth fruit to God or hesitate to live for Him has its 
root in the foolish idea that God and we have opposing interests, so 
that to help out God’s idea of the world and to work with Him and 
toward His end is really not our best. Nothing seems enough to teach 
us that God is all on our side and that He has laid up for us abundant 
provision for feeling and thought and for spiritual strength and joy.— 
From “Footsteps in the Path of Life.” 

Ready for the Bridegroom (532). 

Both the wise and the foolish virgins started out in readiness for 
the bridegroom’s coming with their lamps trimmed and burning, but 
only the wise were found in the end with a supply of oil sufficient to 
last. The bridegroom came unexpectedly; there was no time after 
His coming was heralded to make preparations. What does the oil 
symbolize? In Old Testament times priests and kings were set apart 
for their office by having their heads anointed with oil. The word 
Messiah means the anointed One. “Zechariah saw in vision a golden 
lamp-stand with seven lamps, and on either side of it an olive tree, 
from w r hich oil flowed through golden pipes to feed the flame. The 
interpretation of the vision was given by ‘the angel that talked with’ 
the prophet as being ‘not by might nor by power, but by my spirit, 
saith the Lord.’ So we follow the plainly marked road and Scripture 
use of the symbol when we take the oil in the parable to be the sum 
of the influences from Heaven which were bestowed through the spirit 
of the Lord. The lamp is the spiritual life of the individual, which is 
nourished and made visible to the world as light, by the continual 
communicating from God of these hallowing influences.” This inter- 
pretation is from the pen of Doctor Maclaren, as also this lesson: “All 
spiritual emotions and vitality, like every other kind of emotion and 
vitality, die unless nourished. There is nothing in our religious emo- 
tions which have any guarantee of perpetuity in it, except upon certain 
conditions. We may live, and our life may ebb. We may trust, and 
our trust may tremble into unbelief. We may obey, and our obedience 
may be broken by the mutinous risings of self-will. We may walk in 
the ‘paths of righteousness,’ and our feet may falter and turn aside. 
There is certainty of the dying out of all communicated life, unless 
the channel of communication with the life from which it was first 
kindled, be kept constantly clear. The lamp may be ‘a burning and 
a shining light,’ but it will be light ‘for a season’ only, unless it is fed 
from that from which it was first set alight; and that is from God Him- 
self.” — Tarbell. 


254 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


Keep the Fires Burning (533). 

Dr. John Robertson tells of a Scotch village where, years ago, all 
the hearthfires had gone out. It was before the days of matches. The 
only way to rekindle the fires was to find some hearth where the fire 
was yet aglow. Their search was fruitless until at last they found a 
flaming hearth away up on the hill. One by one they came to this 
hearth and lighted their peat, put it carefully in the pan, shielding it 
from the wind, and the fires were soon burning again throughout the 
community. 

Are the fires getting low in your heart? Has the chill of worldli- 
ness settled down upon you? God has plenty of fire on the hill. Climb 
up into His presence through the path of surrender, and He will take 
the live coal from the altar and lay it upon your heart and upon your 
lips. This is the fullness of the Holy Ghost. This is the passion for 
souls. — The Standard. 


Eternity in the Heart (534). 

These things which, even in their time of beauty, are not enough 
for a man’s soul — have all but a time to be beautiful in, and then they 
fade and die. A great botanist made what he called “a floral clock” 
to mark the hours of the day by the opening and closing of flowers. 
It was a graceful and yet a pathetic thought. One after another they 
spread their petals, and their varying colors glow in the light. But 
one after another they wearily shut their cups, and the night falls, 
and the latest of them folds itself together, and all are hidden away 
in the dark. So our joys and treasures, were they sufficient did they 
last, cannot last. After a summer’s day comes a summer’s night, and 
after a brief space of them comes winter, when all are killed and the 
leafless trees stand silent, 

“Bare, ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.” 

We cleave to these temporal possessions and joys, and the natural 
law of change sweeps them away from us one by one. Most of them 
do not last so long as we do, and they pain us when they pass away 
from us. Some of them last longer than we do, and they pain us 
when we pass away from them. Either way our hold of them is a 
transient hold, and one knows not whether is the sadder — the bare 
garden beds where all have done blowing, and nothing remains but 
a tangle of decay, or the blooming beauty from which a man is sum- 
moned away, leaving others to reap what he has sown. Tragic enough 
are both at the best — and certain to befall us all. We live and they 
fade; we die and they remain. We live again and they are far away. 
The facts are so. We may make them a joy or a sorrow as we will. — 
Alexander Maclaren, D. D. 


PROBATION: READINESS FOR THE SUMMONS 

ILLUSTRATIVE VERSES. 


255 


Ready (535). 

The Master will knock at my door some night. 

And there in the silence hushed and dim 
Will wait for my coming with lamp alight 
To open immediately to Him. 

• • • • • 

If this is the only thing foretold 
Of all my future, then I pray 
That quietly watchful I may hold 
The key of a golden faith each day 
Fast shut in my grasp, that, when I hear 
His step, be it at dawn or midnight dim. 

Straightway may I rise without a fear. 

And open immediately to Him. 

— Margaret J. Preston. 

The Two Villages (536). 

Over the river, on the hill 
Lieth a village white and still; 

All around it the forest trees 
Shiver and whisper in the breeze; 

Over it sailing shadows go 
Of soaring hawk and screaming crow. 

And mountain grasses, low and sweet. 

Grow in the middle of every street. 

Over the river, under the hill. 

Another village lieth still; 

There I see in the cloudy night 
Twinkling stars of household light. 

Fires that gleam from the smithy’s door. 

Mists that curl on the river’s shore; 

And in the road no grasses grow, 

For the wheels that hasten to and fro. 

In that village on the hill. 

Never is sound of smithy or mill; 

The houses are thatched with grass and flowers. 

Never a clock to tell the hours; 

The marble doors are always shut. 

You may not enter at hall or hut; 

All the village lie asleep; 

Never again to sow or reap; 

Never in dreams to moan or sigh, 

Silent, and idle, and low they lie. 




THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


In that village under the hill, 

When the night is starry and still. 

Many a weary soul in prayer, 

Looks to the other village there. 

And weeping and sighing, longs to go 
Up to that home from this below; 

Longs to sleep by the forest wild, 

Whither have vanished wife and child. 

And heareth, praying, his answer fall, 

“Patience! that village shall hold ye all!” 

— Rose Terry Cook. 

In His Steps (537). 

Dear Master, in thy footsteps let us go. 

Till with thy presence all our lives shall glow, 

And souls through us thy resurrection know. 

Alleluia, Christ is arisen! 

— Lucy Larcom. 


Singing Cross-Bearers (538). 

Not on the towering mountain-peak 
Crest-crowned with fiery glow 
Do men the earth’s rich harvests seek, 

But in deep vales below. 

Not for some glaring high emprise 
Seek thou far-soaring wings; 

That faith is noblest in God’s eyes 
That hears a cross — and sings. 

Girded Wayfarers (539). 

Silent, like men in solemn haste, 

Girded wayfarers of the waste, 

We pass out at the world’s wide gate, 

Turning our back on all its state; 

We press along the narrow road 
That leads to life, to bliss, to God. 

— Horatius Bonar. 


Weaving (540). 

Children of yesterday, heirs of tomorrow, 

What are you weaving? Labor and sorrow? 
Look to your looms again: Faster and faster 
Fly the great shuttles prepared by the Master, 
Life’s in the loom: Room for it! Room! 

Children of yesterday, heirs of tomorrow. 
Lighten the labor and sweeten the sorrow; 

Now, while the shuttles fly faster and faster. 

Up, and be at it. At work with the Master. 

He stands at your loom; Room for Him! Room!. 


PROBATION: READINESS FOR THE SUMMONS 

Children of yesterday, heirs of tomorrow 
Look at your fabric of labor and sorrow, 

Seamy and dark with despair and disaster, 

Turn it — and lo! The design of the Master. 

The Lord’s at the loom. 

Room for Him! Room! 

The Reaping (541). 

The tissue of the life to be 
We weave with colors all our own 
And in the field of destiny 
We reap as we have sown. 

—Whittier. 


A Prayer (542). 

When on my day of life the night is falling. 

And, by the winds from unsunned spaces blown, 

I hear far voices out of darkness calling 
My feet to paths unknown. 

Thou who hast made my house of life so pleasant, 

Leave not its tenant when its walls decay; 

0 Love Divine, O Helper ever present, 

Be thou my strength and stay. 

Be near me when all else is from me drifting. 

Earth, sky, home’s pictures, days of shade and shine, 

And kindly faces to my own uplifting 
The love which answers mine. 

1 have but thee, my Father! let thy spirit 
Be with me then to comfort and uphold; 

No gate of pearl, no branch of palm I merit, 

Nor street of shining gold. 

Suffice it if, my good and ill unreckoned, 

And both forgiven through thy abounding grace, 

I find myself by hands familiar beckoned 
Unto my fitting place: 

Some humble door among thy many mansions, 

Some sheltering shade where sin and striving cease, 

And flows forever through heaven’s green expansions 
The river of thy peace. 

— John G. Whittier. 

The Daily Praise (543). 

O, what is life? 

A toil, a strife, 

Were it not lighted by thy love divine. 

I ask not wealth, 

I crave not health: 

Living or dying, Lord, I would be thine! 


258 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


O, what is death 
When the poor breath 
In parting can the soul to thee resign? 

While patient love 
Her trust doth prove, 

Living or dying. Lord, I would be thine! 

Throughout my days, 

Be constant praise 

Uplift to thee from out this heart of mine; 

So shall I be 
Brought nearer thee; 

Living or dying, Lord, I would be thine! 

— Fenelon. 


As a Tale That is Told (544). 

Forenoon and afternoon and night, forenoon 
And afternoon and night — 

Forenoon and — what! 

The empty song repeats itself. No more 
Yea, that is life: make this forenoon sublime. 

This afternoon a psalm, this night a prayer, 

And Time is conquered, and thy crown is won! 

— E. R. Sill. 


“Twilight and Evening Bell” (545). 

We are growing old, brother, side by side. 

Let us pray for one another, God will guide, 

For the love that in the dawning, 

Filled with glory all the morning. 

Is the changeless love of Christ that will abide. 

We are growing older, brother, time is short. 

Let the work that we have willed to do be wrought. 
Let the hand of help be given, 

Speak the word of God and heaven, 

Keep the spirit sweet and tender as we ought. 

We are growing older, brother, but the way 
Has been bright with grace, and glory, day by day. 
And the storms of life that found us, 

Put the strength of God around us, 

Though our eyes were dimmed a little by the spray. 

We are growing older, brother, closer press, 

For the sunset heart must need the soft caress. 
Often when the stars are burning, 

Come the mem’ries and the yearning 
For the high and holy hearts that used to bless. 


PROBATION: READINESS FOR THE SUMMONS 


259 


We are growing older, brother, so they say. 

Just a little wrinkled now, and getting gray, 

But the outward is the seeming, 

They who speak to us are dreaming, 

Youth immortal crowns us in the perfect day. 

We are growing older, brother; earth is dressed 
In no colors like the country of the blest, 

And the one who walks beside us, 

Jesus Christ, the good, will guide us 
Till we find the Father’s face and there we rest. 

We are growing older, brother, even so; 

Though the twilight bells are ringing soft and low. 
Richest gifts of earth are given, 

And a welcome waits in heaven, 

To the Father’s friends and friendship do we go. 

— Selected. 


My Wish (546). 

Let me but live my life from year to year 
With forward face and unreluctant soul. 

Not hastening to nor turning from the goal; 

Not mourning for the things that disappear 
In the dim past, nor holding back in fear 
From what the future veils; but with a whole 
And happy heart, that pays its toll 
To Youth and Age, and travels on with cheer. 

— Henry van Dyke. 


Be Ready (547). 

“Be ready in the morning!" — 

This was thy voice, O Lord, 

To Moses in the desert, 

First penman of thy word. 

Thou badst him up the mountain 
To meet thee face to face, 

There learn directly from thee 
What laws should rule our race. 

“No man shall come up with thee;" 

Alone thou mad’st him climb 
That rugged brow of Sinai, 

Majestic through all time. 

What tongue can tell his trembling, 
When, leaving all behind, 

Alone, alone, he ventured 
To meet the Eternal Mind! 


260 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


“Be ready in the morning!” 

Teach us these words to hear. 

For we must shortly face thee 
With triumph or with fear. 

Prepare our hearts to meet thee 
As children of thy love; 

Then step by step we’ll journey 
To holier heights above. 

“No man shall come up with thee!” 

Alone. O God, alone. 

We know that we must travel 
Into the vast unknown. 

Prepare us for that morning. 

To meet thee all alone; 

Aid us to climb the future, 

Alone, great God, alone! 

— Selected. 


Say Not “Another Day” (548). 

“There is a nest of thrushes in the glen; 

When we come back we’ll see the glad young things,” 

He said. We came not by that way again; 

And time and thrushes fare on eager wings! 

“Yon rose,” she smiled. “But no; when we return, 

I’ll pluck it then.” ’Twas on a summer day. 

The ashes of the rose in autumn’s urn 
Lie hidden well. We came not back that way. 

Thou traveler to the unknown ocean’s brink, 

Through life’s fair field, say not, “Another day 
This joy I’ll prove”; for never, as I think, 

Never shall we come this selfsame way. 

Service (549). 

Do something! Do it now! The work which lie3 
Close to your hand this moment is the best — 

His choice for you — the choice that must be wise; 

Then do your duty, and forget the rest. 

— Edith Hickman Divall. 

In GocPs Eyes (550). 

One was a king they told me, 

And one was a common clod — 

Stripped of their outward seeming, 

How will they look to God? 


PROBATION: READINESS FOR THE SUMMONS 


261 


For one there was blare of trumpets, 

For the other no acclaim — 

When God inscribes his records. 

How will he write each name? 

Men praised the royal purple 
And scorned the common stole — ■ 

Does God in the life eternal 
See aught but the naked soul? 

— Susie M. Best. 


If I Should Meet the Lord Today (551). 

I mind me what He said that day 
I, idling, met Him in the path, 

Not careless speaking, nor in wrath: 

“Go, labor in My field today” — 

I mind me what He said that day. 

If I should meet the Lord today, 

Walking among His harvest sheaves, 

Would He ask, “Have you aught but leaves?” 
And if He asked, what could I say. 

If I should meet Him in the way? 

The summer-time is gone today. 

The harvest-fields are sere and brown, 

Not light but heavy heads hang down — 
Sheaves I have gathered, could I say. 

If I should meet the Lord today? 


— David H. Ela. 


262 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


TEXTS AND TREATMENT HINTS. 

What Is Your Life?— James 4:14 (552). 

I. It is a gift. This means responsibility. 

II. It is a preparation. It means getting ready for something. 

III. It is a conflict. 

IV. It is a test. A new ship has a trial trip. A boy has to go at 
first as an apprentice. 

V. It is an uncertainty. How long will you live? Will you make 
a success of your life? You must decide what you will do. Your life 
can not be bought with money. What will you do with it? It is too 
precious for you alone to care for. Give it to Jesus. He will make it 
glorious. — Homiletic Review. 

“Be Thou Faithful Unto Death, and I Will Give Thee a Crown of Life.”— 

Rev. 2:10 (553). 

Faithfulness is the main distinction of the noblest and best of all 
these angels of Christ’s Church. The high moral excellence of honor- 
ably discharging the duties which were assigned to them is obviously 
made by our Lord the great principle and test of acceptable service. 
These words of the Master mean — 

I. Faithfulness to the human heart. We sometimes make mistakes 
by not listening to what our hearts tell us about our fellow men. 

II. Faithfulness to the conscience. The spirit that overcomes the 
-world is the spirit of Christ. It is only when we arm the soul with 
the same mind that was in Him, only when we take up the cross to 
follow Him even to Calvary, and there to suffer with Him, that we 
can gain the victory. He has promised victory to him that over- 
cometh. 

III. Faithfulness to our Master and His word under all circumstances. 
We may be forgotten by our fellows, hidden from all eyes but His; we 
may have no sympathy from companions, no cheering words from com- 
rades in the fight; we may even hear nothing further on this score from 
the great Captain of our salvation. But we must be faithful unto death 
in our spirit, our trust, our obedience, and our love. — H. R. Reynolds. 

“To Him that Overcometh Will I Give a New Name, Which No Man 

Knoweth Saving He that Receiveth It.” — Rev. 2:17 (554). 

I. Note the large hopes which gather round this promise of a new 
name. (1) The new name means new vision; (2) it means new ac- 
tivities; (3) it means new purity; (4) it means new joys. 

II. Look at the connection between Christ’s new name and ours. 
Our new name is Christ’s new name stamped upon us. On the day 
of the bridal of the Lamb and the Church the bride takes her Husband’s 
name. 

III. Note the blessed secret of this new name. There is only one 
way to know the highest things of human experience, and that is by 
possessing them. 


PROBATION: READINESS FOR THE SUMMONS 


263 


IV. Note the giving of the new name to the victors. The renova- 
tion of the being and efflorescence into new knowledge, activities, per- 
fections, and joys, is only possible on condition of the earthly life of 
obedience, and service, and conquest. — A. Maclaren. 

“I....Have the Keys of Hell and Death." — Rev. 1:18 (555). 

The text shows — 

I. That we must look higher than a natural agency for the account 
of the death of a single individual. Of course here, as in other depart- 
ments of His administration, our Lord walks by second causes. Disease, 
violence, and natural decay are His instrumentality. But who calls the 
instrumentality into play? Who sets it at work? Who first touches the 
hidden spring? Undoubtedly the great Redeemer. Death is a solemn 
thing, a thing of vast moment, and cannot be decreed except immediately 
by Him. The key is in His hand exclusively. 

II. Again, death is often regarded in the mass, and on a large 
scale, a view which derogates altogether from its awfulness and solemni- 
ty. Death is the transaction of an Individual with an individual, of 
Christ the Lord with one single member of the human family. For 
every individual the dark door turns afresh upon its hinges. 

III. Death is in no way the result of chance. The death of each per- 
son is predestined and forearranged. Christ Himself trod the dark avenue 
of death; He Himself passed into the realm of the unseen. There are 
His footsteps all along the path, even where the shadows gather thickest 
round it, as there were the footsteps of the priests all along the deepest 
bed of Jordan. “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of 
death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me.” — Garlburn. 

“Establish Thou the Work of our Hands." — Ps. 90:17 (556). 

Feelings pass, thoughts and imaginations pass: Dreams pass: Work 
remains. Through eternity, what you have done, that you are. They 
tell us that not a sound has ever ceased to vibrate through space; that 
not a ripple has ever been lost upon the ocean. Much more is it true 
that not a true thought, nor a pure resolve, nor a loving act, has ever 
gone forth in vain. — Robertson. 

“And They Heard a Great Voice from Heaven Saying Unto Them, 
Come up Hither.” — Rev. 11:12 (557). 

I. The voice of God comes to us from heaven and says to us, 
“Come up hither.” The new voice of God speaks not to the ear, but to 
the heart. The whole Bible is a great voice from heaven. Revelation 
furnishes us with a continuous proof that it is the upward path which 
God would have us choose from the two that are before us. 

II. A second voice that invites us up to heaven is that of our 
blessed Savior. What was the Redeemer’s whole appearance on earth 
but one earnest, unceasing, lifelong entreaty that men would turn to 
God. 

III. The blessed Spirit, too, adds His voice to that which invites 
us toward heaven. The whole scope and object of His working is to 


264 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


make us fit for heaven, is an indication of His design and His wish that 
we should go up thither. The Spirit, the Purifier, as He makes us 
holier and better, thus fitting us for a clearer atmosphere and a nobler 
company, is ever whispering within us that it must be a higher life in 
which virtue will be perfect, and another world in which hearts will be 
pure. 

IV. The voice of our dear friends who have fallen asleep in Jesus 
invites us to “come up hither.” Let us plant our feet on the rock, and 
take not one step further in the evil way, for tomorrow may end our 
path, and today is the accepted time. — Selected. 

“Be ye also ready.” — Matt. 24:44 (559). 

I Within the margin of a few years you can definitely prophesy 
your death. The one certainty. 

II. It is a species of insanity for a man to know this and refuse to 
act upon it. 

III. Preparation is simply the whole-hearted acceptance of Christ. 

IV. Having done this you can say: “I will fear no evil.” 

“And Be Ye Yourselves Like Unto Men Looking 
for their Lord.” — Luke 12:36 (560). 

I. Christ is coming. 

II. Accounting day will be ushered in by His coming. 

III. Anticipate and prepare for Him and it. 


X. RESURRECTION— IMMORTALITY 


REFLECTIONS AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 

A Contrast (562). 

Two pictures have recently been described, in which Death appears 
as a destroyer and as a friend. In the first he comes into a scene of 
gaiety where revelry and pleasure are at their height. As a cowled and 
ghastly form he passes through and leaves bodies lying stark and life- 
less, while the living flee from him. So he is a destroyer. In the other 
picture he has come to an aged saint in the church belfry, and has 
touched him lovingly so that a look of peace is on his face. The window 
is thrown open and a bird sings its song on the sill. Death has come 
as a friend to close the hard gates of life, and to open the gates of 
eternity. It makes all the difference to whom death comes, whether he 
is destroyer or friend. To him who treads the path to life with Jesus 
Christ, going toward the tomb with Him until the tomb closes, there is 
assurance of an opened tomb, and a path that stretches on upward 
where the foot marks lead away from the grave. There have always 
been dreams of that life beyond, which has mastered death, but no one 
save this Christ of the opened tomb has ever come back to bear news 
of it, and to promise entrance into it. — Selected. 

Unanswerable. (563) — “I came from God,” said the poet-preacher, 
George McDonald, “and I am going back to God, and I won’t have any 
gaps of death in the middle of my life.” 

Homegoing (564). 

The old images of death were the skull and cross-bones, the darkened 
house, the hearse, the black robes of darkness and plumes plucked 
from the wings of night and gloom. Then came Christ. With one blow 
He shattered these barbarous conceptions. Dying was homegoing. Death 
was the door into His Father’s house. Here men burn with fever and 
shiver wdth cold; yonder is the soul’s summerland. Here the tree ripens 
fruit once a year; there every month. Here men are starved, pinched, 
dwarfed; there they shall grow. Here reason is a spark; there it will 
be a flame. Here song has a single note; there it shall deepen into a 
symphony. Here a man feeds on a crust; there is the fruit of the tree’ 
of immortal life. Here he drinks at a broken cistern; there flows the 
river of the water of life. Shakespeare is the true man in Intellect, 
and of his forty faculties, here starved and seminal, there men shall be 
Shakespearean, and more, in every one of his gifts, as if a hundred poets 
and sages and heroes were united into one full-orbed man. Therefore 
Paul’s abandon of joy at the very thought of death. — Hillis. 


266 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


The Gladness of Hope (565). 

We read that in the cities of Russia at the beginning of every 
Easter day, when the sun is rising, men and women go about the streets 
greeting one another with the information: “Christ is risen!” Every 
man knows it; but this is an illustration of how a man, when his heart 
is full of a thing, wants to tell it to his brethren. He does not care if 
the brother does know it already; he goes and tells it to him again. And 
so when the truth of Christ’s gospel shall come so home to each and 
every one of us that all men shall be filled with the glad intelligence, 
and tell the story of how men are living in the freedom of their heaven- 
ly Father, it shall not be needful to have a revival of religion. — Phillips 
Brooks. 

A Mother's Anticipation (566). 

I know a mother, who, fifty years ago, stood by the casket that 
held the body of her firstborn. It was the first great sorrow of life and 
it crushed her young heart. I looked into her face. I mentioned that fact 
which occurred fifty years ago. The whole expression changed imme- 
diately. There it lived just as it lived fifty years gone by. In the night 
she wakes up and remembers her darling and waits for the morning 
hour, and she turns over in the darkness of the night, stains the pillow 
with her tears and kisses the pillow in imagination as kissing her first- 
born. That mother, after half a century, can not be separated from 
that great moment in life, and she is just living and waiting and chant- 
ing this tonight in her old age: “I wonder if she’s changed! I wonder 
how she’ll look! I wonder if she’ll know me when she sees me! I 
wonder! I am getting sometimes overanxious to see her!” — Cortland 
Myers, D. D. 

The Resurrection Hope (567). 

The very same gospel which sets before the single believer the 
glorious issue of life, at the same time and by the same message binds 
up his hope with that of every other believer and, more than that, with 
destiny of the whole world. It is only by neglecting the resurrection 
that the Christian can be isolated. — Brooke Foss Westcott. 

What's the Use (568). 

Some one has put on the market a picture of a human skull, with 
the words underneath: “What’s the Use?” You look into the empty 
eyesockets and the yawning chasms in what was once a human counte- 
nance, and realize that to this same material ruin is coming the physical 
frame in which we live. In such a mood as fits this thought there comes 
the querulous, hissing, pessimistic wail, “What’s the Use?” 

We answer the wail with the rejoinder that there is a great deal 
of use. We do not expect this body to last forever, but expect to live 
forever. As long as we live in this body we are called on to live well 
and wisely. We are to take as good care as possible of the body, so 
that it may serve its day and end. When it falls into decay and ruin, 
we shall be able to do without it if we have done in and with it just 
what we ought to have done. — Lutheran Observer. 


RESURRECTION— IMMORTALITY 


267 


Death's Blessings (569). 

So under the prospect of the greatest of all farewells God has been 
pleased to make the world more kindly. Death has touched all relation- 
ships and hallowed them. It is the source and the spring of more than 
half life’s gladness. In a father’s care, in a mother’s love, in the de- 
votion of husband and wife and in the bond of friendship there is a 
sweet solicitude, a depth, a grasp, a hunger that the world would never 
have dreamed of but for death. — George H. Morrison. 

Two Views of Death (571). 

The best thought of the nineteenth century, at least so far as the 
English race is concerned, is summed up in the poetry of Tennyson and 
Browning. For each of them the art of poetry was the serious expres- 
sion and perpetuation of great thoughts, — not the idle song of idle singers. 
One was the greater artist, the other the greater thinker: which was 
the greater poet it is perhaps too early to try to say. But the works of 
both are interesting equally for their resemblances and their contrasts. 
Both passed through doubt and struggle: both became poets of peace 
and faith. But how differently their struggles and their victories are 
expressed! 

Perhaps the most interesting of these contrasts is that between the 
two poems which these men wrote as they looked forward to death, — 
not merely to death in the abstract, but to the individual poet’s end, 
personally conceived and faced. In each case the poem was actually 
written near the end of life, and in each case it was intended to stand 
as the epilogue to the author’s works. Tennyson’s swan-song is known 
to everyone. For him death meant “sunset and evening star,” a tide 
“too full for sound or foam,” a gentle passing into the great sea, met by 
a Pilot perfectly trusted. Browning’s is less familiar, but no less 
characteristic as it is no less noble. Passing by the moment of death 
altogether, he considers what he shall be to his friends when they think 
of him as departed. Shall they pity him, as imprisoned in darkness 
after so wide and vigorous a life? 

“No, at noonday in the bustle of man’s worktime 
Greet the unseen with a cheer! 

Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be, 

‘Strive and thrive!’ cry ‘Speed, — fight on, fare ever 
There as here.’ ” 

It would be idle to try to claim superiority for either attitude. One 
represents one mood, the other another. One will best console one man, 
the other another. For some death is friendliest when thought of as the 
calm voyage, with full sail spread at sunset, into a stormless though 
mysterious sea. For others it cannot possibly be welcomed except as 
giving hope for unstopped, or even freer and fuller, activity. 

Guesswork and Proof (572). 

Socrates, in the presence of death, exclaimed: “Would that we 
could more securely and less perilously sail upon a stronger vessel or 


268 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


some divine word!” As David Purves says: “There is no more pathetic 
utterance of antiquity than this.” The true soul wistfully scanning 
the mysterious waste of waters and fancying that it discerned far away 
the golden isles, and yet not sufficiently sure as to weigh anchor and 
I launch out into the deep ! A syllogism is a frail vessel for so tremen- 
dous a venture; a metaphysical theory, a paper-boat to dare the dread 
abyss. The cry of Socrates was the cry of humanity before the advent, 
even when it could get as far as this. 

The coming of the Lord has changed all this. We have found the 
stronger vessel in which to sail, the divine word has been spoken to 
assure our heart. The anchor is ours that will neither snap nor drag. 
The Pilot is ours who perpetrates no shipwreck, and whose face we 
shall see when “the tide which drew from out the boundless deep turns 
again home.” The slippery raft of Socrates’ conjecture has been ex- 
changed for the Ark of God that cannot founder. The New Testament 
teaches with a positiveness and triumph all its own. — Watkinson. 

W. J. Bryan’s Argument (573). 

If the Father deigns to touch with divine power the cold and pulse- 
less heart of the buried acorn and make it burst forth from its prison 
walls, will He leave neglected the soul of man, who was made in the 
image of his Creator? If He so stoops to give the rosebush, whose 
withered blossoms float upon the autumn breeze, the sweet assurance 
of another springtime, will He withhold the words of hope from the soul3 
of men when the frosts of winter come? If matter, mute and inanimate, 
is changed by force of nature into a multitude of forms that never die, 
will the spirit of man suffer annihilation after it has paid a brief visit 
like a royal guest to this tenement of clay? 

Intimations of Immortality (574). 

Two friends w r ere driving along a country road, and as they went 
each kept calling the other’s attention to some new charm in the scene. 
“How prettily the brook winds over there in the meadow,” said one, 
pointing to a zigzag line of brilliant green, in vivid contrast with the 
hues of the surrounding landscape. 

The girl strained her eyes. “Why, I can’t see any water; can you?” 

Her friend laughed. “No, I don’t see the brook itself. But that 
strip of green tells me that the water is there.” 

I am the Resurrection (576). 

Yes, it is true now, and it ever will be true, as Christ Himself said, 
“I am the resurrection and the life.” It is He Himself that is the resur- 
rection, and He Himself that is the life of the world. Of all persons who 
have ever been upon our earth, there is but one of whom the hearts 
of men never tire. “Every hero becomes a bore at last,” said 
Emerson. But not so can any one say of the risen Christ. More and 
more He becomes an inspiration. More and more He grows in beauty. 
His power is ever on the increase. That power will never cease — be- 
cause He, the risen Christ, is today and always, to every Christian 
disciple, Companion and Savior. 


RESURRECTION— IMMORTALITY 


Tennyson and Hal lam. (577) — Said the great Tennyson in a better 
moment: “It’s the reality of life! Where’s Arthur, my heart’s love, 
the greatest genius of the literary world, going out in boyhood? Where’s 
Arthur? He lives!” Then Tennyson turned away from all question 
and began to sing beautiful music. — Selected. 

A Glorious Certainty (578). 

We have all echoed those words of the noted divine: — “I want some- 
thing more than a guess for my dying pillow!” Thank God we have it. 

“Intimations of Immortality” are all well enough for poetry; they 
will do to interest an idle hour when I am well and strong, and my 
lease on life seems flawless. 

But we want something more than felicitious expressions and 
esthetic fancies when the room is darkened and a white-capped nurse 
is taking our steadily rising temperature, and a baffled physician is 
compelled to suspect defeat. At such times we want something very 
definite, authoritative, beyond a peradventure. Nature is full of whispers, 
hints, suggestions, implications, pointing to the probability of a future 
life. 

Reason can work out the problem almost to a final certainty. Cicero 
said, “There is, I know not how, in the minds of men a certain presage, 
as it were, of a future existence, and this takes deepest root and is 
most discoverable in the greatest geniuses and most exalted souls.” 

But neither poets, nor naturalists nor philosophers nor all combined, 
can give me what I want when death’s shadow falls across my life. 

Thank God Christ can! He does! 

No wonder that, as the realization of this came upon the great 
Apostle afresh, he burst forth into that ecstatic, jubilant classic of Eter- 
nal optimism: 

“O death where is thy sting? 

O grave where is thy victory? 

But thanks be to God who giveth us the victory througn our Lord, 
Jesus Christ.” 

No wonder that Easter is a time of joy and gladness. 

It celebrates the bringing of life and immortality to light; the 
scattering of the haze and mists of sweet fancies and beautiful guesses, 
and the shining forth in all its noonday brilliancy of the Sun of Right- 
eousness; the enthronement in our hearts of a blessed certainty, which 
neither death, nor musty tombs, nor aught else can ever again dim. — The 
Christian World. 


How Christ Changed Things (579). 

The Roman orators exclaimed, “If there be a meeting place of the 
dead!” Then Christ entered the scene, whispering that God was fully 
equal to the emergency named “death.” Passing through the grave, 
He exclaimed, “Because I live ye shall live also!” And from that hour 
death was clothed with sweet allurement. The falling statesman, the 


270 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


dying martyr and mother welcome the signs of death as signals hanged 
from the heavenly battlements. The iron mask of death fell off, and 
death stood forth a shining angel of God coming for welcome and convoy. 

The dark river narrowed to a tiny ribbon. It seemed but a step to 
the immortal shore. The path of death became a path of living light. 
Striking hands with Jesus Christ, the little child, the sage, the states- 
man, and the seer alike went joyously toward death, and disappearing, 
passed on into an immortal summer. — N. D. Hillis, D. D. 

Raised With Christ (580). 

It is doubtless a glorious thing to have been created sinless and to 
have kept that blessed estate, but it is something sweeter far to have 
gone down with the Son of God into the darkness of the sepulcher un- 
afraid, and to have come up to that new life as “children of the resur- 
rection.” When the oldtime fury broke out in 1870 in the streets of 
Paris, the most precious treasure in the Louvre, the Venus of Milo, 
disappeared. When shells were bursting in the Rue Rivoli and in the 
Place du Carousel and in the Gardens of the Tuilleries, the statue sunk 
out of sight. But when order was restored, and peace came back, the 
most beautiful form in all the world was recovered from her secret 
burial and returned to her sacred pedestal. For long, long months the 
statue slumbered in the earth only to rise to a second and more secure 
existence. Them that sleep in the dust will God care for, and raise 
“to die no more, being children of the resurrection.” — Selected. 

Immortality A Present Possession (581). 

Set aside, if you have ever had it, the notion that immortal or 
eternal life is something to come by and by, after you have died and 
risen from the dead. Understand that immortality is a present posses- 
sion. You are immortal, or you never will be If you would have 

a right to the tree of life, if you would have the right to know that 
there is a tree of life, you must seek this immortal life here, and seek 
it from the God who is here, and seek it through the channels that He 

opens for you We must have the immortal life here and now 

if we would have a rational hope to have it hereafter. — Lyman Abbott. 

More Windows (582). 

We seldom stop to think what a house without windows would be 
like. The gloomiest prison usually has at least some slits in the wall 
to let the light in, if not to let the sight out. The incoming light is but 
one thing, though very important. Windows are for outlook, with all 
which is meant by it. 

There is a significant reminder of our limitations below from the 
pen of Alexander Maclaren: “Our house which is from heaven will have 
a great many more windows in it than the earthly house of this taber- 
nacle, which was built for stormy weather.” It will be well for us if 
we remember this double lesson. Let us not expect to have as broad 
an outlook here and now as we shall have hereafter and yonder. How 
can we see in all directions, and understand all things when we have 
only a limited number of windows? It is expecting too much. We are 


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271 


not supposed to know and to comprehend everything in the universe, 
or we would have the means at command. Let us not fret about it, 
but take on trust what we cannot see. 

Then let us be jubilant over the hope set before us that by and by 
our house will have more windows. The infinite Builder has promised 
a wider outlook, a broader vision, a clearer view by and by. And what 
beautiful things He will provide for us to look upon! 

Meanwhile, the narrowest house below, and the most restricted 
in outlook, has yet a window toward the sky. Through this enough may 
be seen of that fair expanse of blue to enlarge and also to quiet the 
heart and to keep one glad while waiting for the many windows of “the 
house which is from heaven,” which is being prepared for us. 


Victor Hugo's Argument for Immortality (583). 


“I feel in myself the future life. I am rising, I know, toward the 
sky. The sunshine is over my head. Heaven lights me with the reflec- 
tion of unknown worlds. 

“You say the soul is nothing but the result of bodily powers: why 
then is my soul the more luminous when my bodily powers begin to 
fail? Winter is on my head and eternal spring is in my heart. 

“The nearer I approach the end, the plainer I hear around me the 
immortal symphonies of the worlds which unite me. It is marvelous, 
yet simple. It is a fairy tale, and it is a history. For half a century 
I have been writing my thoughts in prose, verse, history, philosophy, 
drama, romance, tradition, satire, ode, song — I have tried all. But I feel 
that I have not said the thousandth part of what is in me. When I 
go down to the grave I can say, like so many others, ‘I have finished 
my day’s work,' but I cannot say, ‘I have finished my life.’ My day's 
work will begin the next morning. The tomb is not a blind alley, it is 
a thoroughfare. It closes in the twilight to open with the dawn. I 
improve every hour because I love this world as my fatherland. My 
work is only a beginning. My work is hardly above its foundation. I 
would be glad to see it mounting and mounting forever. The thirst 
for the infinite proves infinit; 



Asleep in Jesus (584). 


The Christian name for a burial ground is cemetery, “sleeping 
place.” 


20-1 


“Sleep is a death; oh, make me try. 
By sleeping, what is it to die! 

And as gently lay my head 
On my grave as now my bed.” 


“A man goes to bed willingly and cheerfully, because he believes he 
shall rise again the next morning, and be renewed in his strength. 
Confidence in the resurrection would make us go to the grave as cheer- 
fully as we go to our beds.” 


272 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


Our Immortal Destiny (585). 

There are the thousand intimations that man is destined for an 
immortality. If death is natural, what do you make of these? I had a 
friend who left for Canada the other day, and he took some of his 
luggage into the cabin with him; but the great boxes went down into 
the hold, and on each of them was written “Not wanted for the voyage.” 
Every one of these chests was an absurdity if all was over when the 
ship reached Halifax— and man has a hundred things “Not wanted for 
the voyage” — things that are meaningless without a life beyond. Now 
remember that the New Testament knows nothing of a shadowy im- 
mortality of souls. It is man that is immortal, soul and body, each 
glorified to be the organ of the other. And if in the progress towards 
that immortality there comes a moment when these twain are sundered — 
a moment when soul and body, which make man, are torn apart by a 
relentless power — I say that that calls for an explanation which the 
death of bird or beast does not demand. — Rev. G. H. Morrison. 

Victory Through Fellowship (586). 

A father and a child were roaming through a wide country pasture. 
The little one prattled in the sunshine, now clinging to the father’s 
hand in an ecstasy of confidence, and now flying as fast as his feet 
could carry him to a thicket where the wild flowers grew. When away 
from the immediate presence of the protector, the child would turn 
every now and again to be sure that the father was there, as though 
for the moment he had forgotten that he was not alone, and then, with 
the delightful certainty of being carefully watched, would roam still 
farther, intent on some new object. Suddenly danger appeared in the 
ominous bark of a dog. The child felt the instant need of guardian- 
ship, and with trembling haste rushed to the father’s embrace, his 
cheeks blanched with fear, his eyes filled with tears. The strong arms, 
however, were no sooner around him than he grew calm again, and 
the old smile returned. The consciousness of absolute safety destroyed 
the terror of the dog’s bark, because father and child were heart to 
heart. The relation between Enoch and God must have been like that 
when he walked with God, “and he was not, for God took him.” 
Stephen’s victory was like that when he bore insult and persecution 
with a face like an angel. If we walk with God, and have fellowship 
with our Lord Jesus Christ here, we shall have victory over death. — 
Selected. 

The End Is the Beginning (587). 

There comes a day when every college class has its experience of 
disintegration. The annual reunions, at first so overflowing with mirth, 
become gradually saddened because one and another have dropped out, 
and finally there is only the last survivor, and when he is gone that 
class lives only in the college records. The same experience is true 
of families. The question naturally asked when a member of the house- 
hold, long absent, returns to an old home is about the changes that 
have taken place. There are sure to be vacant chairs at the table, 


RESURRECTION— IMMORTALITY 


273 


and sure to be new mounds in the graveyard; but, if we are Christians 
who believe in the life everlasting, we know that for every life that 
ends here there is life begun in the home •whence they go no more out. 
Just as we constantly close our eyes at night and pass into a state 
of restful unconsciousness, to waken in the morning ready to take up 
the tasks of another day, and enjoy another day’s pleasure, so death 
closes our eyes on earth merely to open them upon the transcendant 
glory of an endless day. — Selected. 

Despair and Hope (588). 

A recent writer says that Rider Haggard suggests that life is a 
game of blind man’s buff on a narrow mountain top, played in the mist. 
Players are constantly slipping over the precipice, but nobody notices 
because there are plenty more, and the game goes on. Left to our- 
selves, that is all there is to it. A man is here today and gone tomorrow. 
Where he is gone there is no sage wise enough to tell us. We call but 
he returns not. One did return. All our human sepulchers have foot- 
prints -which lead down. There are no heel marks toward the grave. 
That is, there is only one pair of footprints with heel toward the grave, 
and the foot was nail-pierced. Christ has passed through the grave, 
and has shown that there is meaning and life beyond it. 

The Instinct of Immortality (589). 

There is within each of us an instinct of immortality. We do not 
need science to teach us that. The feeble efforts we put forth here to 
do good and to cultivate in our lives all that is best seems a prophecy 
of a more complete work and life in another sphere of existence. Do 
you think God will take the tools out of the workman’s hands just 
when he has learned to use them properly, or that He will discharge 
His servants just when they are best able to serve Him? It may 
sometimes appear to me that my hope of a future life is all vain. That 
God does not care for me, and has not given to me an instinct of the 
immortal life, but when I think how He guides the birds of passage on 
their long and dreary way, I am led to ask, “Is not a man better than 
a bird?” and I lind hope and cheer in the lines of the poet addressed 
to the waterfowl: 

“He, who from zone to zone 

Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, 

In the long way that I must tread alone 
Will lead my steps aright.” 

Men in all ages and in all spheres of life have had their thoughts 
turned to the future. In his old age Goethe said: “My own convic- 
tion of a continued existence springs from my consciousness of personal 
energy, for I -work incessantly to the end. Nature is bound to assign 
to me another form of being as soon as my present one can no longer 
serve my spirit.” Jean Paul Richter says: “We desire immortality, 
not as a reward of virtue, but as its continuance.” — Herbruck. 


274 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


Christ’s Interpretation of Death (590). 

Here is Christ’s first great interpretation of the mystery of death: 
“The child is not dead (in your sense of that word, seeing only the 
grave), but sleepeth.” Put this scene alone, and these words alone, 
over against the Old Testament reticence, and (if there were nothing 
more to the same purpose in the New Testament) even this interprets 
death and gives the believer a new hope. — C. I. Scofield, D. D. 

“Resurgam” (591). 

A singular fact in the history of St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, is, 
that the first stone which the architect ordered the masons to bring 
from the rubbish of the former cathedral, destroyed by fire, was part 
of a sarcophagus, on which had been inscribed the single word “Resur- 
gam,” “I shall rise again.” The prophecy was fulfilled, for out of the 
ruins of the old a veritable poem in marble has arisen. 

Every soul born into this world has “resurgam” written upon it, 
“I shall rise again.” God has filled all nations with emblems of this 
doctrine. If the little insect that is formed on the leaf in a few short 
days takes wings and soars into life, if the dry root that has lain 
motionless during the winter frosts sends its green life upward toward 
the tender smiling sky of the springtime, if the little grain of wheat 
holds in its bosom a potentiality that will produce its kind after ten 
millenniums have sped by, how much greater the possibility that lies 
in the life of man! The one sweet triumphant note which the soul of 
every man flings out as it passes on through the gates of the material 
realm is, “Resurgam.” — Selected. 

Shall He Live Again? (592). 

In my home last night I looked at a picture which reminded me 
of that tragedy in the death of Thomas Chatterton, eighteen years of 
age. He wrote such marvelous poetry that he had to deceive the pub- 
lishers in order to get them to believe it, in order for them to use 
it. He said he had dug it out of some of the old archives in some of 
the museums, and the publishers marveled at it! Some great genius 
had had his name put to it, and they printed it. He was such a genius 
that he couldn’t make them believe that he wrote it and was forced 
to say that it was the work of somebody else. He wrote poems — oh, 
such startling poems — but he just wrote a few, and in his lone room 
in a London garret the greatest genius England ever saw, at that age, 
starved to death, and in his despair he helped it on with a dose of 
arsenic! 

Where is Thomas Chatterton? He is making poetry somewhere! 
Great, universal God, I know many a young man or young woman in 
this world of our bright with the poetic gift, with the artistic touch, 
never having the possibility of any development, all their lives hedged 
up and imprisoned and compelled to live in that kind of environment 
without any opportunity or possibility! Here’s a young man with splen- 
did gifts, working seven days in the week and unable to come to church 
tonight. He has an ambition for an education. He talked it over with 


RESURRECTION— IMMORTALITY 


275 


me. He writes most beautifully; father gone, mother — half dozen chil- 
dren, all younger than he! For six years he has been slaving his 
life for their support, and every possibility has gone from him. One 
of the saddest expressions in human life is this one: If I only had a 
chance! 

If there is a just God in the heavens, sometime, somewhere, you 
will have a chance! I say it with all reverence, but with a deep con- 
viction in my soul, that if this life is all, then this world is the worst 
possible world that even Almighty God Himself could make, that sin 
has done as much for this world as Almighty God could do in human 
conception. — Cortland Myers, D. D. 

Implanted in the Race (593). 

We can trace this belief in immortality in an unbroken chain from 
the earliest records of history to the present time. Cicero, who made 
the most exhaustive study of the subject that has come down to us 
from ancient times said: “The immortality of the soul is established 
by the consent of all nations.” The Chaldean Tablets, written before 
the time of Abraham, contain prayers for the dead. The literature of 
all ancient nations is colored with the belief. The tombs of Egypt with 
inscriptions 4,000 years old, are witnesses to the belief of that ancient 
race. The literature and sculpture of the Phoenicians, the Assyrians, 
Greeks and Romans are eloquent with the hope of another life. It 
formed the basis of Homer’s song; the rude Norseman built his mythol- 
ogy upon it. It is seen in the lamps which lighted the sepulchers of 
Greece and Rome. The Gallic warrior had his armor buried with him 
that in another world he might follow his favorite pastime, war. With 
the plumed and painted Indian, are buried his bow and arrow and 
wampum that in the “Happing Hunting Ground” he may pursue the 
chase. In India the widow was buried on the funeral pyre of her husband 
that she might serve him in the spirit world. In Persia the grave is 
often left partly open to facilitate the resurrection of the dead. The 
Japanese believe not only in the immortality of man but of animals. 
The lowest tribes of central Africa and even the degraded Patagonians, 
the lowest of the human family, teach a future existence. — James D. 
Rankin, D. D. 


The Soul's Plea (594). 

One of the apparently tragical phases of human life is that so 
many cherished plans are never completed, so many precious hopes 
never realized. Too often the evening comes when man’s best work 
is only begun. It w r ould seem that our noblest purposes are unfulfilled, 
our highest aspirations unsatisfied. True it is, as one has said, that 
“a broken column is the fit monument of our life.” 

It is related that Humboldt, the great German naturalist, who at- 
tained the age of ninety, exclaimed shortly before his death: “Oh, for 
another one hundred years!” How many an earnest, ambitious mortal 
has felt with sadness of heart that the term of life on earth is all 


276 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


too short. Death utters his summons and the impatient workman must 
leave his task unfinished. And the restless soul pleads for immortality. — 
McCulloch. 


An Instinctive Craving (595). 

We have an instinct for immortality. It is horn with us and Is 
woven into the very tissues of our life. Under spiritual cultivation it 
becomes stronger and more vital. Instinctive desire is met by cor- 
responding reality; water for the thirsty, food for the hungry and 
paradise for the aspiring soul of man. How beautifully William Cullen 
Bryant illustrates this imperishable instinct for life eternal in his 
poem, “To a Waterfowl.” He describes the flight of the bird toward 
the southland, its speeding onward, far up in the sky, led unerringly 
by a Power all-wise, all-loving: 

“Thou’rt gone, the abyss of heaven 3 

Hath swallowed up thy form; yet on my heart 
Deeply has sunk the lesson thou hast given, 

And shall not soon depart. 

“He who, from zone to zone, 

Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, 

In the long way that I must tread alone, 

Will lead my steps aright.” 

— Selected. 

This Mortal Shall Put On Immortality (596). 

We see death only from the outside. The body, which has been 
the means of expression and communication, ceases its work, and we 
say our friend is dead. But this only means that we have no further 
intercourse with him. There is no answering pressure of the hand, 
and the loving voice is still. Yet our friend lives, nevertheless; for all 
live unto God. Somewhere in God’s Kingdom he is engaged in the 
activities and has the experiences which belong to that unseen realm. 
And all the while he and we are in the hands of our Father. 

Love met us and prepared the way when w r e came into this life; 
similarly love meets us when we pass into the next life and prepares 
the way for us there. Death, then, is only an incident in the existence 
of an immortal spirit. It is a passage from a lower to a higher phase 
of our continuous life. In the great resurrection chapter which I read 
from St. Paul, the animal body is replaced by a spiritual body; the 
corruptible puts on incorruption, and the mortal puts on immortality. 
As Paul puts it in another chapter, the earthly house of our tabernacle 
is dissolved, but we are clothed upon -with another habitation, a house 
not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. And all the successive 
phases of this life of ours are comprised in the divine thought, and are 
gathered up in one great plan of love and wisdom. The gloom and 
terror, then, with which the imagination has shrouded this subject 
are heathen, and not Christian, or they are borrowed from the outward 


RESURRECTION— IMMORTALITY 


277 


appearance which masks the hidden spiritual fact. St. Paul, who was 
looking forward to a violent death, speaks of it with incidental ease 
as the time of his departure, or, as he put it, the time of his sailing. 
The term he used was a nautical one, and means an unmooring, as if 
Paul thought of raising the anchor or casting off the lines and sailing 
for another haven and another shore. And the writer of the fourth 
Gospel reports the Master as speaking of the many mansions in the 
Father’s house, and of places prepared for many. Rightly, then, do 
we say that this event is no more an ending than it is a beginning. 
The earthly life has ceased, and the immortal life has begun. On this 
fact our thought should dwell today. To us the heartache, the tears, 
the loneliness, and the emblems of sorrow; to him the fullness of life 
immortal. — Dr. Borden P. Bowne. 

The Lesson of Easter (597). 

What manner of being is this who alone among all its millions 
of earth commands the supreme place in our thoughts and actions? 
His words, His deeds, His character, His sacrifice declare Him to 
be the Son of God. The Son of man, He called Himself the brother 
of us all, and yet in the most divine way, its fullest and final revelation 
of heaven to men. He it is with whom we have to do, and who has to 
do with us. 

His pre-eminent claim is in the fact that He is the Redeemer of 
the world. “And I, if I be lifted up.” Startling statement. Again and 
again He made the declaration: “The Son of man must be lifted up.” 
And what did He mean by that lifting up of Himself? The magnifying 
of His wisdom, the beauty of His life? More than this. “For this He 
said signifying what death He should die.” 

O, what a lifting up was that upon the cross, outside the city walls! 
What a lifting up to pain and darkness and shame and death! This 
is the tragedy of the ages. “But He was wounded for our transgression, 
and the Lord laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” 

“The Son of man must be lifted up.” What made that must? 
Wherein was the divine necessity of His death? First because of our 
sins and our helplessness in guilt. Second, because of His infinite love 
for men. O, it was not the nails, nor the power of the Roman soldier 
which held Him to the cross. Had He willed it He could have saved 
Himself. The power which chained the sufferer to the cruel tree was 
His infinite love for sinful man. “He must die because he would save, 
and He would save because He did love.” 

“And I will draw all men unto Me.” The mightiest power in the 
world today is the cross of Christ. This is the magnet which rivets all 
eyes, dominates all hearts, more and more. It is transforming the 
lives of men and nations. O, thou wondrous cross! All other lights on 
earth grow dim before Thy Easter. “O Galilean, Thou hast conquered!” 

“Were this whole realm of nature mine, 7 

That were a present far too small, 

Love so amazing, so divine, 

Demands my soul, my life, my all.” 

— Dr. Henry M. Curtis. 


278 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


Risen With Christ (598). 

The event of Christ’s resurrection is glad tidings of greater joy 
to all people than was the event of His birth, great as that was. The 
good news that the annual return of the Easter festival brings fresh 
to our memories is, that if Christ be risen, then they that love Him and 
are in Him are risen with Him. 

The present resurrection of Christians with Christ is a most precious 
truth, which, it may be safely assumed, does not enter as vividly and 
sensibly into their belief and life as it should. The resurrection that 
is to be, after their victory over death, engrosses their thought to the 
exclusion of a proper consideration of the resurrection that now is. 
The glory of the fondly anticipated second resurrection outshines so 
far as to eclipse the glory of the first, which is part of their present 
experience. While it is well for Christians not to be insensible to the 
joy that awaits them, it is not well for them to be oblivious to the 
joy that is possible to them now. For the joy that was set before 
Him, Jesus endured the Cross, despising the shame; and it is no dis- 
credit for the disciple to be as his suffering Lord was. 

In the midst of life’s vicissitudes and manifold tribulations, Chris- 
tians have an indisputable right to all the comfort and strength which 
the prospect of a joyful resurrection, at the last day, can impart. This 
right they must not be denied. Of the consolation that springs from 
the deserted tomb in the garden they will not be deprived. Permit 
them to cherish their best and brightest hopes. It is not in the power 
of the most vivid imagination, exercised to its utmost tension, to exag- 
gerate the ecstasies of that hour when they shall be caught up to forever 
participate in the glory of their risen and exalted Redeemer. — Selected. 

eath But a Shadow (599). 

Christ put Himself into the very power of death, that henceforth 
those who will only believe will find it but a shadow, and no longer 
the old dreadful reality. They will day by day so walk with God in 
heavenly fellowship that they will be among the first of those "caught 
up to be forever with the Lord." This makes a new heaven. It is 
within the heart. It makes a new earth; heaven is all about. It makes 
Calvary and the resurrection for the first time full of the richest mean- 
ing. Easter then is the great springtime of the new heart. We will 
then be living in the New Jerusalem already let down from heaven, 
where the Lamb is indeed the light thereof! May our prayer ever be: 
"O Lord, hasten the day when Easter shall mean this to the world; 
and may that meaning begin by faith in me!” Then can we say to 
the call, "He is risen," "He is risen, indeed." — Riale. 

The Resurrection (600). 

Massive stones and cathedral arches do not keep the remains of 
royalty more securely than the wide elements of nature are preserving 
the vestiges of every man that ever breathed. From ocean depths, from 
mountain-side; from the forest and from the desert; they shall come 
again! 


RESURRECTION— IMMORTALITY 


279 


And thus, the earth is more valuable than you would think it. God 
has far more to watch over in it than its living population. It rolls on 
its way, bearing in its bosom a vast freight of that which is yet to 
people heaven. Let us remember, that the quiet burying-place which 
we pass with scarce a glance, contains mines which in God’s sight are 
richer by far than ever enriched Peru. Not merely the mouldering 
remains of organized matter; not something which has seen its day 
and done its work; but something whose day is only coming, and whose 
work is not yet well begun; something which rests less in memory 
than in hope; the “body still united to Christ!” The field of the world 
is a harvest-field. Not vainly did our fathers call the burying-place 
God’s Acre. It is sown with the seeds of God’s harvest; and the day 
of resurrection is God’s reaping-day. 

The places on earth that are quietest now will be most bustling 
on that day of resurrection! When the hum has ceased in the great 
city’s streets, the sequestered walks of its burying-place will be trodden 
by many generations together. It is a strange thing to stand in the 
breathless stillness of some populous cemetery, and to think what a 
stirring amid its dust the voice of the last trump will make! — Boyd. 

The Glorified Body (601). 

The wisest people of antiquity exerted all their ingenuity to arrest 
the progress of decay in their beloved dead; and so successful was 
their skill, that we can even yet draw forth from the sepulchral pyra- 
mids of Egypt, forms that two thousand years since walked the streets 
of cities whose very ruins have disappeared before the touch of time. 
It was but the other day that I held in my hand the hand of a little 
Egyptian boy who died two thousand years since; and it was a strange 
thing as it were to touch that hand across that long waste of years. 
And though, when we look on the decaying features, which in all their 
fragility have outlived rocks and empires, w r e may smile at this earnest 
anxiety to preserve the least important part of man, we cannot but feel 
a thoughtful interest in the contemplation of that pious care which made 
men so anxiously seek to preserve the lips they had in childhood kissed, 
and the knees they had climbed. It was a praiseworthy, even though a 
futile task, for such as knew of no resurrection, to care for even the 
material part of man; and though we, in these modern days, may bury 
our dead from our sight, and yield the battle with decay, it is not 
because we feel no concern in even the decaying relics of a parent or 
a friend; it is because we know assuredly that this mortal shall put on 
immortality, and that God Himself will watch over it in the space which 
must elapse before it does so. Give, then, Christians, the body to the 

grave; and never seek to arrest its quiet progress to rejoin the ele- 
ments. Let it decay like all things here, returning peacefully to the 

dust from whence it was taken; and rather cherish in your memory 

the pleasant recollection of its health and strength, than preserve in 
your dwelling the wasted image of its weakness and ruin. Lay it in 
the grave, in the certain hope of a joyful resurrection; and when you 
come to die, cling to the same blessed hope. Know that never pyramid 


280 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


! V ' 

kept ancient king so carefully and well as earth and air and sea will 
keep the mortal part of your friend and of yourself. And anticipate, 
through Jesus, that coming day, when the blessed soul shall tenant 
its glorified body, and the glorified body shall be rendered meet for 
the dwelling of the blessed soul. — Boyd. 

A Personal Resurrection Day (602). 

There must be a personal resurrection day to every soul which 
seeks salvation through the risen Saviour as truly as there was a resur- 
rection day for Him. For it is written in the Word that those who 
have trusted Him have passed from death unto life and are risen to- 
gether wfith Him. And by a true parallel of the inner sense of spiritual 
things the soul’s resurrection day is as really a day of new understand- 
ing as was the resurrection day of Jesus. Not until the new man has 
commenced to live by the birth from above does comprehension of 
heavenly things become possible to the human soul. Only the living 
disciple knows the living Christ. The world indeed is eager to claim 
acquaintance with Him; it boasts its admiration for His philanthropy. 
His gentleness, and His self-sacrifice. But that is only the acquaintance 
of those whose judgment-day plea will be that He taught in their streets. 
The brethren to whom He appeared alive for the space of forty days 
would never have consented to say that mere idle hearing of His way- 
side teachings could have given anyone a conception of the divinity 
of their Lord. And so it is even now, not the complacent reader of the 
gospel story, but the sinner who has been forgiven by Him, who appre- 
ciates the Christ. Nobody knows the Lord who has not heard the 
voice that quickens the dead from their trespasses. But with that 
quickening voice and crowding close upon it, what knowledge comes of 
tenderness that soothes as a mother soothes, of grace that sustains 
like the bulwarking of a mighty rock, of providence that delivers, of 
joy that illuminates, and of love that transforms. — The Continent. 

Many Witnesses (603). 

Emerson said: “We are much better believers in immortality than 
we can give grounds for.” Max Mueller remarked: “Without a belief 
in personal immortality religion surely is like an arch resting on one 
pillar, like a bridge ending in an abyss.” A scientist like Sir Humphrey 
Davy can say: “We know enough to hope for immortality, the indi- 
vidual immortality, of the better part of man.” Southey said: “Faith 
in a hereafter is as necessary for the intellectual as for the moral char- 
acter.” It is Wordsworth who speaks of “The faith that looks through 
death.” Longfellow was enraptured with the idea, “Thou glorious spirit 
land! Oh, that I could behold thee as thou art the regiver of life, and 
light, and love, and the dwelling-place of those beloved ones whose 
being has flowed onward like a silver-clear stream into the solemn 
sounding main into the ocean of eternity.” Goethe once remarked to 
a friend: “Setting, nevertheless, the soul is always the same sun. I 
am fully convinced it is a being of a nature quite indestructible, and 
that its activity continues from eternity.” The great philosopher Kant 
wrote; “The summum bonum then is practically only possible on the 


RESURRECTION— IMMORTALITY 


281 


supposition of the immortality of the soul.” John Fisk, the evolution- 
ist, gave utterance to his belief thus: “I believe in the immortality of 
the soul, not in the sense in which I accept the demonstrable truths 
of science, but as a supreme act of faith in the reasonableness of God’s 
work.” Again he says: ‘‘Each new discovery but places man upon a 
higher pinnacle than ever and lights the future with the radiant color 
of hope.” Hugo says: “I feel in myself the future life.” And what did 
Tom Paine write? ‘‘The belief in a future state is a rational belief 
founded on facts visible in creation. I hope for happiness beyond this 
life.” The famous botanist, Asa Gray, said: “Not vitality, but per- 
sonality, is our evidence for immortality.” We know of no finer word3 
on this subject than those spoken by Benjamin Franklin: “Life is a 
state of embryo, a preparation for life. A man is not completely born 
until he has passed through death.” — Wiest. 

Dying — Renewing (604). 

The leaf falling from the tree is not lost, it is conserved by being 
converted into another form of life. The caterpillar encases itself in 
its chrysalis from which under the warming sun it breaks its shell 
and bursts forth into new life. In its hibernating state it still lived. 
Behold the bird’s nest in the field with its treasure of eggs. After a 
little while the shell only is left behind, while the bird itself has flown. 
Nature speaks to us in a thousand tongues, it flashes forth truth in myraid 
forms. The river that flows past this city has done so for ages past. 
The Indian worshiped on its banks as we do now; not a particle of 
its waters is the same, and yet it is the same river and will go on 
forever. “I die daily.” I am throwing off this body, but the soul, the 
organizing, vitalizing principle within me is renewing me day by day.— 
The Christian World. 

“The Dead Are the Living” (605). 

No one ever stated this blessed truth of immortality more clearly 
than did Dr. Alexander Maclaren in his memorable words: “The dead 
are the living. Every man that has died is at this instant in full pos- 
session of all his faculties, in the intensest exercise of all his capacities, 
standing somewhere in God’s universe, ringed by a sense of God’s pres- 
ence, and feeling in every fiber of his being that life, which comes after 
death, is not less real, but more real, not less great, but more great, not 
less full or intense, but more full and intense, than the mingled life, 
which, lived here on earth, was a center of life surrounded with a 
crust and circumference of immortality. The dead are the living. They 
lived while they died; and after they die, they live on forever.” 

“The Dead Are” (606). 

We do not speak of our departed friends as of those who “were” 
or “have been.” No, we speak of those who are in better worlds. The 
range of death is but narrow and but momentary in duration. Death 
makes the entrance into fuller, perfect life possible. If it were not so, 
God would never permit death. He has a better sphere in store for us. 
This earth is a place for temporary sojourn; there is another sphere 


232 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


in which is the permanent home. Death is necessary only that we may 
pass from this temporal life into the eternal glory. That is the law 
universal. The seed dies that it may have a glorious resurrection in 
the full-grown stalk crowned with the rich grain, multiplied many times. 
Is there not here a picture of the resurrection glory of the believer? 
Is not Longfellow right? “The grave itself is but a covered bridge 
leading from light to light through a brief darkness." Yes, it is so. 
Why be afraid of the brief darkness? Are we not familiar enough 
with temporary darkness? We sleep. All is dark. There is no fear 
in us when we go to sleep. Death is going to sleep. We shall awake. 
What an awakening that must be for every soul. What a flood of light 
and love divine must burst upon him who falls asleep in Jesus! — E. F. 
Wiest, D. D. 

“There Is No Death, What Seems So Is Transition” (607). 

To Jesus Christ, death and the resurrection were not separable 
events, with a long interval between the two. They were simultaneous 
events; rather, they were synonymous words, signifying the same event. 
Death is the dropping of the body into the grave, where it mingles with 
the dust. Resurrection is the upspringing of the spirit from the body, 
when through accident, disease, or old age, it has ceased to be a tenable 
abode. Three times Jesus Christ raised the dead. Each time He as- 
sumed that the free spirit was close at hand, could hear His voice and 
would obey, each time the spirit which had escaped from its tenement 
returned to animate it again. 

If I thought that life becomes extinct, it would be very difficult to 
persuade me that it is revived again after a long and dreary sleep. But 
I do not believe that life ever becomes extinct. I might be said to 
believe in resurrection because I do not believe in death. When my 
skeptical friend asks me for proof of immortality, I reply by asking 
him for proof of mortality. That after the organ has been reduced to 
ashes it can be reconstructed seems to me incredible. But I see no 
reason for thinking that the organist is dead because the organ has 
been burned. — Lyman Abbott. 

Death the Gate of Life (608). 

It is one of the most wonderful provisions of redemption that by 
divine wisdom and pow r er, death, than which there is nothing more 
dreaded among men, has been transformed into a medium by which 
the soul of the believer makes its exit from a world of death into a 
world of endless life. If the choice had been left to us, we would have 
selected any other medium. 

I have looked upon a sunset sky, when the cloud strata have taken 
the form of stairway of burnished gold reaching into infinite space; and 
It seemed as if I could almost discern the forms of descending angels 
and ascending saints, and I said, “Surely, this is the ladder Jacob saw — 
this is the gate of heaven.” Then the vision changed, as the scene 
took on still greater brilliancy, and pencils of light seemed to trace 
the glowing vision of the Apocalypse, until there appeared walls of 
jasper, and gates of pearl, and a thousand flashing domes and towers, 


RESURRECTION-IMMORTALITY 


283 


and I said: “Surely, this a scene fit to gild with glory the last earthly 
hour of a child of God.” But instead of choosing one of the brightest 
and most attractive objects, God has chosen one of the darkest and 
most repulsive, and made it a medium of the soul’s transition from 
earth to heaven. — Anonymous. 

White Funerals (609). 

The last interment in the cemetery is another scene where the noise 
of the shout of joy strangely mingles with the weeping of the people. 
The godly life which is a series of progressive enhancements ends witn 
a triumph which explains all that has gone before, which crowns all 
that has gone before. The Master had a white funeral. “And entering 
into the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, arrayed 
in a white robe.” And that robe “white as snow” was a figure of the 
mighty radiant elements which lighted the tragedy of Calvary. The 
blessed dead who die in the Lord share with Him in the glory and hope 
of the resurrection unto life eternal. Very often, as we have seen, do 
the sweet and bitter mingle perplexingly; but in the churchyard this 
ambiguous experience becomes most acute and baffling. Travelers tell 
us of fruits of the wilderness “which taste bitter and sweet, a strange 
concentrated essence of the tropics,” and so after years of acquaintance 
with commingling sweets and bitters, we come to the graveyard, the 
borderland, where we taste the concentrated essence of the contrasted 
problems of sin and redemption, the anguish of death and the rapture 
of immortality, the consciousness that all is won in the very event and 
moment in which all is lost. 

George Sand writes, “I felt twenty years younger on the day that 
I buried my youth.” She felt no sadness in the transition; only the 
sense of a truer wisdom, a serener peace, a completer liberty, an ex- 
panding horizon. But if the burial of one’s youth may become such an 
emancipation, how much younger shall we feel on the day that we 
bury our age! What shall be the glory and joy of the final emancipa- 
tion when our friends bury us, and this corruptible puts on incorrup- 
tion, this mortal immortality! Our Master dared not to tell us more, 
lest we should have been overweighted with the vision. All golden 
weddings and diamond jubilees only faintly foreshadow the sweet re- 
lease, the full felicity. Do we believe our creed? The very magnificence 
of the Christian hope is sometimes felt by us as a difficulty, we are 
tempted to think it too grand to be true. Rather is it too grand to 
be false. Think of our hope in the light of creation! If the evolution 
of ages culminates in humanity, nothing except a great* destiny for the 
race will justify the mighty expense. Think of our hope in the light 
of redemption! Only as a splendid destiny awaits those for whom 
Christ died is the cross justified. Let us confidently believe, looking 
for the coming of the Lord Jesus unto eternal life. If all through life 
we proceed from grace to grace, we surely have nothing to fear in 
its ending. Transfiguring gleams from the opening heavens will gild 
that last funeral, palms hide the willows, and joy break through the 
swimming eyes of the mourners; it shall be the whitest of white funerals) 
as it is in sure and certain hope of resurrection to eternal life. 


284 - 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 

And when grim Death doth take me by the throat. 

Thou wilt have pity on Thy handiwork; 

Thou wilt not let him on my suffering gloat, 

But draw my soul out — gladder than man or boy. 

When Thy saved creatures from the narrow ark 
Rushed out, and leaped and laughed and cried for joy. 
And the great rainbow strode across the dark. 

— W. L. Watkinson, D. D. 


235 


RESURRECTION— IMMORTALITY 

ILLUSTRATIVE VERSES. 

The Resurrection Hope (610). 

■paulinus preached the gospel in Northumbria, England, in the 
early ages to King Edwin and his warriors. Edwin was silent, but one 
of his aged warrior-sages arose and said, “Around us lies the black land 
of Night.” Then, 

“Athwart the room a sparrow 
Darts from the open door: 

Within the happy hearth-light 
One red flash and no more! 

We see it come from darkness. 

And into darkness go: — 

So is our life, King Edwin! 

Alas that it is so! 

“But if this pale Paulinus 

Have somewhat more to tell; 

Some news of Whence and Whither, 

And where the soul will dwell: — 

If on that outer darkness 
The sun of hope may shine. 

He makes life worth the living: 

I take his God for mine.” 


X 


He Is Not Dead (611). 


He is not dead, this friend. Not dead. 

But in the path we mortals tread; 

God some few trifling steps ahead. 

And nearer to the end. 

So that we, too, once past the bend, 

Shall meet again, as face to face, this friend 
We fancy dead. 

— Robert Louis Stevenson. 


God's Springtime (612). 

Dr. Archibald Hodge once gave rein to his imagination in a lecture 
on theology. He drew for his hearers a picture of Laura Bridgman, 
blind and deaf and dumb, on a day of mighty restoration. What wealth 
of knowledge poured in upon her sensibilities! What revelations dawned 
like planets swimming into the astronomer’s ken, upon her astonished 
mind! What wonders of vision and of love enriched her receptive soul! 
God’s springtime will come. Oh, the surprise of immortality! “God 
giveth it a body.” 


“A body wearing out, 

A crumbling house of clay! 

O agony of doubt 

And darkness and dismay! 


Trust God and see 
What I shall be,— 
His best surprise 
Before your eyes!” 


286 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


Soul and Body (613). 


The body says , “I am thirsty,” 
The body says, “I am cold,” 
The body says, ‘‘I am weary,” 
And last of all, “I am old.” 


And for its thirst there is water. 

And shelter warm in the blast, 
And for its ache there is slumber; 
But it dies, it dies at last. 


But I am a soul, please Heaven, 

And though I freeze in my cage, 

Or burn in a sleepless fever, 

I shall live untouched of age. 

— Ethel wyn Wetherald, 


Rise To Immortality (614). 

Son of God, tne grave defying. 
Raise us also into life; 

Help us, on Thy power relying, 
Sin to conquer in the strife; 
Crucified with Christ, may we 
Rise to immortality. 

Hope On (615). 

Have faith in a third-day morning. 
In a resurrection hour; 

For what ye sow in weakness 
He can raise again in power. 


And the hopes that never on earth shall bloom, 

The sorrows forever new, 

Lay silently down at the feet of Him 
Who died and is risen for you. 

— Harriet Beecher Stowe. 


The Haven (616). 

I have made a voyage upon a golden river, 

’Neath clouds of opal and of amethyst. 

Along its banks bright shapes were moving ever. 
And threatening shadows melted into mist. 

My journey nears its close: in some still haven 
My bark shall find its anchorage of rest. 

When the kind Hand, which every good has given, 
Opening with wider grace, shall give the best. 

“Auf Wiedersehen” (617). 

We walk along life’s rugged road together 
Such a little way. 

We face the sunshine or the stormy weather 
So brief a day. 

Then paths diverge, from sorrow so appalling 
We shrink with pain, 

Yet, parted far and farther, still keep calling,. 

“Auf Wiedersehen.” 


RESURRECTION— IMMORTALITY 

Despair not! See, through tear dimmed eyes, before us 
Such a little way, 

Lies God’s dear garden, and His sun shines o’er us 
A long, long day. 

There all paths end, long parted loved ones, meeting. 

Clasp hands again, 

The past, the pain forgot in rapturous greeting, 

“Auf Wiedersehen.” 

— Susie E. Abbey. 


Love's Dream (618). 

“Yet love will dream and faith will trust 
(Since He knows our need is just). 

That somehow, somewhere meet we must. 

“The truth to flesh and sense unknown. 

That life is ever Lord of death, 

And love can never lose its own.” 

—Whittier. 


A Fuller Life (619). 

“And they shall be mine, they as on earth we knew them, 
The lips we kissed, the hands we loved to press. 

Only a fuller life is circling through them, 

Unfailing bliss, unchanging loveliness.” 

The Song of Faith (620). 

Day will return with a fresher boon; 

God will remember the world! 

Night will come with a newer moon; 

God will remember the world! 

Evil is only the slave of good, 

Sorrow the servant of joy. 

And the soul is mad that refuses food 
Of the meanest in God’s employ. 

The fountain of joy is fed by tears. 

And love is lit by the breath of sighs;’ 

The deepest griefs and wildest fears 
Have holiest ministries. 

Strong grows the oak in the sweeping storm. 
Safely the flower sleeps under the snow. 
And the farmer’s hearth is never warm 
Till the cold wind starts to blow. 

Day will return with a fresher boon; 

God will remember the world! 

Night will come with a newer moon; 

God will remember the world! 


288 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


The World a Tent (621). 

When my bier is borne to the grave, 

And its burden is laid in the ground, 

Cry not like the mourners around, 

“He is gone” — “All is over” — “Farewell!” 

But go on your ways again. 

And, forgetting your own petty loss, 

Remember his infinite gain; 

For know that this world is a tent 
And life but a dream in the night. 

Till Death plucks the curtains apart 
And awakens the sleeper with light! 

Immortality (622). 

O Christ, whose cross began to bloom 
With peaceful lilies long ago. 

Each year above Thy empty tomb 

More thick the Easter garlands glow. 

O’er all the wounds of that sad strife 
Bright wreaths the new, immortal life. 

The Morn (623). 

So long Thy power has blest me, sure it still 
Will lead me on 

O’er moor and fen, o’er crag and torrent, till 
The night is gone, 

And with the morn those angel faces smile 
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile! 

— J. H. Newman. 


We Shall Meet (624). 

God is not cruel, stern though His decree; 

Joys He took from us He has still in store! 

He cannot mean that we should meet no more: 
Come back for me! 


The Lamb the Light (625). 


The bride eyes not her garments, 
But her dear bridegroom’s face; 

I will not look on glory, 12 

But on the King of Grace. 


Not on the crown He giveth, 
But on His pierced hands; 
The Lamb is all the glory 
Of Immanuel’s land. 


The Heavenly Home (626). 

There is a calm beyond life’s fitful fever, 

A sweet repose, a never-failing rest, 

Where white-robed angels welcome the believer, 
Among the blest, among the blest. 

There is a home where all the soul’s deep yearnings. 
And silent prayers shall be at last fulfilled; 

Where strife, sorrow, murmurings and heart-burning* 
At last are stilled, at last are stilled.” 


RESURRECTION— IMMORTALITY 
Face to Face (627). 

Face to face with Christ, my Saviour; 

Face to face what will it be, 

When with rapture I behold Him, 

Jesus Christ Who died for me? 

The Beyond (628). 

They talk about the fading hopes, that mock the years to be. 
But write me down as saying there’s hope enough for me, 
Over the old world’s wailing the sweetest music swells, 

In the stormiest night I listen and hear the hells — the hells! 

Revealer and Revealed (629). 

From glory unto glory that ever lies before. 

Still widening, adoring, rejoicing more and more, 

Still following where He leadeth from shining field to field. 
Himself our goal of glory, Revealer and revealed. 

The Easter Dawn (630). 

My heart that many a weary day 
Went sighing cn its way, 

With the clear light the morning brings 
Exults again and sings, 

As one who in a dreary night 
Lies tossing and distraught. 

Welcomes the earliest gleams of light 
On the cloud curtains wrought. 

“The Lord is risen!” His ransomed sing, 

And hells of gladness ring. 

“The Lord is risen!” my heart replies; 

And hope with Him shall rise. 

No more beside an empty tomb 
I wait, where love is cold. 

The light of morning breaks the gloom; 

The words of promise hold. 

The welcome, Faith, that faltered long. 

To thine own happy song; 

And hope and love, with visions sweet, 

Where dawn and shadow meet. 

Out of the night of doubt and fear 
God makes His morning shine. 

The fulness of the day is near — 

Its light forever mine. 


289 


— Rev. Isaac Ogden Rankin, 


290 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


Resurgam (631). 

The fool asks, “With what flesh? in joy or pain? 

Helped or unhelped? and lonely, or again 
Surrounded by our earthly friends?” 

I know not; and I glory that I do 
Not know; that for eternity’s great ends 
God counted me as worthy of such trust 
That I need not be told. 

Out to the earthward brink 
Of that great tideless sea, 

Light from Christ’s garments streams. 

Believing thus, I joy, although I lie in dust; 

I joy, not that I ask or choose, 

But simply that I must. 

I love, and fear not; and I cannot lose, 

One instant, this great certainty of peace. 

Long as God ceases not, I cannot cease; 

I must arise. 

— Helen Hunt Jackson, 


Teachers (632). 

The grasses and the sod, 

They are my preachers. Hear them preach 
When they forget the shroud, and God 
Lifts up these blades of grass to teach 
The resurrection! Who shall say 
What infidel can speak as they? 

— Joaquin Miller, 

Easter’s Answer (633). 

Does death end all? 

Does earth complete the story? 

Is there no sequel to life’s broken tale? 

Sounds there no call, 

Fraught with the hope of glory, 

From out the gloomy shadows of the vale? 

Lives there no seer, 

Whose eye has pierced the gloaming, 

And won from it, reluctant, visions bright? 

Can we but fear, 

That after weary roaming, 

Death has no recompense? — the tomb but night? 

The countless host, 

For which death’s gates keep swinging; 

The loved ones, for whom other loved ones weep;. 

Are these all lost? 

And is affection clinging 
To friends embraced in an eternal sleep? 


RESURRECTION— IMMORTALITY 


291 


If this is all— 

If when the heart stops throbbing, 

And all the wheels of being cease to roll 

If this is all. 

And life ends with earth’s sobbing, 

And “dust to dust” was “spoken of the soul,” 

Then must we loathe 
The powers that make known, 

The soul’s capacity for higher joy; 

Then must we loathe 
The heart’s affections sown 
But for the frosts of winter to destroy. 

No! — Death is life. 

And parting is but meeting 
Beyond the cloudland shadowing the grave. 

No! — Death is life 
And, as earth’s years are fleeting, 

We grasp the immortality we crave. 

The empty tomb — 

Blest prophecy of glory — 

Is vanquished by the great all-conquering One. 

Its scattered gloom 
Confirms inspired story: 

Time sees the youth of being just begun. 

— J. H. B. 


Risen In Christ 

Christ is risen! We are risen! 

Shed upon us heavenly grace. 

Rain and dew and gleams of glory 
From the brightness of Thy face! 

So that we, with hearts in heaven, 

Here on earth may fruitful be; 

And by angel-hands be gathered. 

And be ever, Lord, with Thee! 

— C. Wordsworth. 

Weeps No More (635). 

Thus said the Lord, “Thy days of health are over,” 

And, like the mist, my vigor fled away, 

Till but a feeble shadow was remaining, 

A fragile form fast hasting to decay. 

The May of life, with all its blooming flowers. 

The joy of life, in colors bright arrayed, 

The hopes of life, in all their airy promise — 

I saw them in the distance slowly fade. 


292 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


Then sighs of sorrow in my heart would rise, 

And silent tears would overflow my eyes; 

But a warm sunbeam from a higher sphere 
Stole through the gloom, and dried up every tear. 

“Is this Thy will, Good Lord? the strife is o’er; — 

Thy servants weeps no more.” 

— Mowes, H. L. L. 

The Call of God (836). 

Beneath the cover of the sod 
The lily heard the call of God; 

Within its bulb so strangely sweet 
Answering pulse began to beat. 

The earth lay darkly damp and cold, 

And held the smell of grave and mold. 

But never did the lily say, 

“O who shall roll the stone away?” 

It heard the call, the call of God, 

And up through prison-house of sod 
It came from burial-place of gloom 
To find its perfect life in bloom. 

— Author Unknown. 

The Love That Will Not Let Me Go! (637). 

0 Love, that will not let me go, 

I rest my weary soul on thee; 
give thee back the life I owe, 

That in thine ocean depths its flow 
May richer, fuller be. 

O Light, that followed all my way, 

I yield my flickering torch to thee; 

My heart restores its borrowed ray 
That in thy sunshine’s blaze its day 
May brighter, fairer be. 

0 Joy, that seekest me through pain, 

I can not close my heart to thee; 

1 trace the rainbow through the rain, 

And feel the promise is not vain 

That morn shall tearless be. 

0 Love, that lifted up thy head, 

I dare not ask to fly from thee; 

1 lay in dust life’s glory dead, 

And from the ground there blossoms red 
Life that shall endless be. 


•George Matheson. 


RESURRECTION— IMMORTALITY 


293 


Repose (638). 

O! soft are the breezes that play round the tomb, 

And sweet, with the violet’s wafted perfume. 

With lilies and jessamine fair. 

The pilgrim, who reaches this valley of tears, 

Would fain hurry by; and, with trembling and fears. 

He is launched on the wreck-covered river. 

Here, the traveler, worn with life’s pilgrimage dreary. 
Lays down his rude staff, like one that is weary. 

And sweetly reposes forever. 

— Karamisin. 


No Death (639). 

“There is no death; the stars go down 
To rise upon some fairer shore, 
And bright in heaven’s jeweled crown 
To shine forevermore.” 


The Living Lord (640). 

The Lord is risen indeed. 

He is here for your love, for your need — 

Not in the grave, nor the sky. 

But here where men live and die. 

—Gilder. 


My Guide (641). 

There is no path in this desert waste, 

For the winds have swept the shifting sands; 
The trail is blind where the storms have raced, 
And a stranger, I, in these fearsome lands. 
But I journey on with a lightsome tread; 

I do not falter nor turn aside; 

For I see His figure, just ahead — 

He knows the way I take — My Guide. 

There is no path in this trackless sea; 

No map is limned on the restless waves; 

The ocean snares are strange to me 
"Where the unseen wind in its fury raves; 

But it matters naught; my sails are set; 

And my swift prow tosses the seas aside; 

For the changeless stars are steadfast yet, 

And I sail by His star-blazed trail — My Guide. 


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THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


There is no way in this starless night; 

There is naught but cloud in the inky skies; 

The black night smothers me, left and right, 

I stare with a blind man’s straining eyes; 

But my steps are firm, for I cannot stray; 

The path to my feet seems light and wide; 

For I hear His voice — “I am the way!” 

And I sing as I follow Him on — My Guide. 

— Robert J. Burdette. 


Outcome of Peace (642). 

I cannot lose 

One instant, this great certainty of peace: 

Long as God ceases not, I cannot cease; 

I must arise. 

— Helen Hunt Jackson. 

Love Crowned With Immortality (643). 

The comfort of the Easter day 
Comes not alone to those who lay 
Their loved ones down with sealed eyes 
To sleep beneath the bending skies, 

But to those hearts whose restless moan 
Tells of sweet hopes too swiftly flown. 

Of friends who tossed love’s costly flower 
Aside — the bauble of an hour. 

And left us, while they yet remain, 

A legacy of ceaseless pain. 

By these sad graves through darkened day*, 

A tender, white-robed angel stays, 

To roll the stone, that we may see 
Love crowned with immortality. 

— Helen Strong Thompson. 


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295 


TEXTS AND TREATMENT HINTS. 

“He Has Risen” — Luke 24:6 (644). 

I. 'I'he Resurrection of Jesus is the pledge of the Resurrection of 
each believer. 

“Because I live ye shall live also,” He said. It is the voice of 
the Risen Christ that calls the dead to life. 

II. The Resurrection of Jesus is the pledge of His Kingship and 
of the Last Judgment. 

“The Son of man shall come in His glory and all the angels with 
Him and shall sit on the throne of His glory and shall judge the 
world.” 

III. The Resurrection of Jesus is the seal of His Atonement for 
the sins of man. — Selected. 

“And He That Was Dead Came Forth”— John 11:44 (645). 

I. Light on the problem of death and the clouds of sorrow which 
gather around it, on the Valley of the Shadow of Death, on the Dark 
River all must cross, is one great need of humanity. These are typi- 
fied by the trial, the death, and the burial of Christ. 

II. The feelings of Jesus in the presence of death His disciples also 
should have: — 

a. A deep indignation at sin, which brings death, and adds its 
poison, and sting, and bitterness to death. 

b. Sympathy with the afflicted. 

When the noted Father Taylor, of Boston, was at the point of death 
some one suggested to him that he would soon be with the angels. He 
spoke up quickly, “I don’t want angels, I want folks.” 

III. Jesus is the resurrection and the life; the giver of eternal life 
which lasts beyond the grave, and makes the resurrection possible and 
blessed. He proved His assertion and promise by raising Lazarus from 
the dead. 

IV. The raising of Lazarus proved that the soul has an existence 
independent of the body, that death does not end all. — Peloubet’s 
Notes. 

“Blessed Are the Dead That Die in the Lord”— Rev. 14:13 (646). 

A voice from heaven explicitly directed the holy apostle to write: 
“Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: Yea, 
saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors; and their works 
do follow them.” Gracious are these words. Unbroken existence, rest 
from all burdens and troubles, and a reward for all the service and 
the fruition of all the hopes that belong to Christian discipleship on 
earth — surely this message covers all the possibilities of spiritual bless- 
edness and answers the inquiries that will be made by receptive and 
responsive souls. — Bishop Fitzgerald. 


2SS 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


The Things Which Are Seen Are Temporal; but the Things Which 
Are Not Seen Are Eternal — 2 Cor. 4:18 (647). 

Paul is not speaking of bodily sight only, for he tells of “craftiness, 
and hidden things of shame” which shall perish, as empty prayers will 
fall short; and one of the lasting things is the face of a good man 
which clings in memory. 

But Paul at Ephesus had been looking at things that ought to 
perish, however men valued them; and he contrasted them with what 
God looks at and holds worth preserving. 

I. What are the perishables? 1. A house made with hands. A 
real home must shelter love, and self-denial, and the nurture of char- 
acter. 2. Troubles. Affliction is meant to be “but for a moment.” 

II. What are the eternal things? 1. Honest character. 2. "The 
face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6). We have seen it only in thought 
but it includes the revelation of God’s holiness and patient, hopeful 
love. 3. Heaven, — Homiletic Review. 

“He is Risen”— Luke 24:6 (648). 

The fact of Christ’s resurrection is viewed in three aspects in 
Scripture; and these three emerge upon the consciousness of the early 
church successively. It was, first, a fact affecting Him, a testimony 
concerning Him, carrying with it necessarily some great truths with 
regard to Him, His character. His nature and His work. Later it came 
to be to them a pattern, and a pledge, and a prophecy of their own 
resurrection. And finally it came to be a symbol of the spiritual resur- 
rection and newness of life into which all they were born who par- 
ticipated in His death. They knew Him first by His resurrection; 
they then knew the power of His resurrection as a witness of their 
own; and they knew it as being the pattern to which they were to be 
conformed even whilst here on earth. 

“But Thou Shalt Know Hereafter.”— John 13:7 (649). 

The day of resurrection into the life beyond shall be more than all 
other days a day of understanding. That will be the fulfillment to us 
of that infinitely solacing promise: “But thou shalt understand here- 
after.” That will be the hour when the apostle’s saying shall come 
true for us each: “Then shall I know fully even as also I was fully 
known.” Even when the disciples least understood their Lord, there 
was never a time when He did not understand them perfectly. So it 
is blessed to remember that now our little and poor knowledge of 
Christ does not imply any defect in His knowledge of us. He does not 
see in a mirror darkly. He knows us fully. And the precious promise 
of Easter is that in like manner we shall fully know Him. — Selected. 

“Thanks Be to God Which Gives Us the Victory.” — 1 Cor. 15:57 (550). 

1. The victory over sin. 

2. The victory over earthly trials. 

3. The victory over death. 


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297 


“O Death Where Is Thy Sting?”— 1 Cor. 15:55 (651). 

1. Out of Christ death is so bitter in prospect and in experience that 
men have questioned if life, which at last inevitably leads to it, is 
worth having. 

2. Christ has transformed death from a foe into a friend. 

3. With what glad gratitude this should fill our hearts. 

“Death Is Swallowed Up In Victory.”— 1 Cor. 15:54 (652). 
Through Christ the Christian is enabled so to triumph over death 

that 

1. The fear of it is banished. 

2. The actual experience becomes radiant. 

3. And death itself becomes merely a door opening into glory. 

Our Friend Lazarus Sieepeth; But I Go, That I May Awake Him Out 
Of Sleep.— John 9:11 (653). 

Jesus called Lazarus His friend, — blessed title, glorious privilege, 
friend of Jesus! Am I His friend? He gives us the test, — “Ye are my 
friends if ye do whatsoever I command you.” His command is, trust 
Me. love Me, serve Me. Do I obey this? Then I am Jesus’ friend, and 
what is more, He is my friend. This friendship is a treasure neither 
time nor chance, men nor devils, life nor death can take away. Let 
us not imagine Christ is not our friend because we suffer. He allowed 
Lazarus to die, yet we are told Jesus loved Martha and her sister and 
Lazarus. Jesus’ friends now upon earth may all die, may all sleep; 
but He has not forgotten them, one day He will say to the angels “My 
friends sleep, but I go to awake them.” Then the Lord Himself shall 
descend with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the 
trump of Gcd. And the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we which 
are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the 
clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the 
Lord. — Rev. R. H. Hardening. 

For As The Father Raiseth Up The Dead, and Qulckeneth Them; even 
So The Son Qulckeneth Whom He Will. — John 5:21 (654). 

Life is the prerogative and gift of God, alike of Father and Son. 
So declare these words of Saint John; and all life is essentially one. 
But to the conscious recipient is there not a difference in the gift sug- 
gested by these same words corresponding to the person of the giver? 
Surely to such a recipient a gift carries with it the personality, the 
touch, of the hand from which it comes. And it is this personality 
which gives it most often its highest value and influence. “The gift 
without the giver is bare.” But what is true of our smaller earthly 
tokens is vastly truer of the high gifts of heaven, and this highest gift 
of all. Grateful, happy, is it to the devout soul, to recognize in every 
heart throb, every function, physical or spiritual, the Father’s forethought 
and provision for His children. But an element of even deeper tender- 


208 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


ness and love, as well as responsibility, is added to the gift, as coming 
from the wounded human hand of Jesus. It glows and breathes with 
the very spirit of His life and redeeming work. 

And this is the gift, this life, which He gives to every earnest seek- 
ing heart; for “whom He will,” is after all only another expression, 
according to the gospel, for “whosoever will.” — R. U. McVickar, D. D. 

“If a Man Die Shall He Live Again?”— Job 14:14 (655). 

The only reasonable argument against the immortality of the 
soul is the death of the body. 

The body dies, and, so far as we can see, all individual existence 
ceases. There is no response. There is no manifestation of continued 
life. . . . The ordinary evidence of our senses denies the doctrine 
of the immortality of man. 

To this denial an obvious reply is that death is one of the oldest 
of all facts. 

From the beginning of time, death has confronted life. So far 
as the death of the body constitutes an argument against the immor- 
tality of the soul, it was as valid a contradiction a hundred thousand 
years ago as it is today. But it has never prevailed. The argument 
is plain enough, and makes its appeal to the reason of every man, but 
it has never been effective. . . . 

Nothing happens to show that the argument of death is invalid 
in any particular. There it is, and we can not gainsay it. But we 
do gainsay it. The primitive man, contemporary with the glaciers, 
buries in the grave of his dead the symbols of his faith in immortality. 
Confronting the unanswerable facts, he cries, “My friend is dead, but 
he shall live again!” And this cry of hope, of confidence, of victory, 
has been repeated every day since life and death began. It is evident 
that something is the matter with an argument which is at the same 
time so plain and so everlastingly unconvincing. — “Everyman’s Religion,” 
by George Hodges. 

“If a Man Die Shall He Live Again?”— Job 14:14 (656). 

This is a question as old as the tragic fact of death. “There is hope 
of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the 
tender branch thereof will not cease. But man dieth, and wasteth 
away, yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he?” This question 
has been asked by multitudes, before and since the time of Job. We 
stand by the side of the wasting forms of loved ones, we see their 
pallid faces, parched lips, fluttering temples and finally that awful some- 
thing that tells us that they have known the mystery, and in death’s 
presence we weep and instinctively ask again the question asked by 
the perfect and upright man in the land of Uz so many ages ago: 
“If a man die shall he live again?” To this question our race, with 
few exceptions, has instinctively answered “Yes.” All religions, both 
true and false, are based on this assumption. “Without such a belief,” 
says Max Muller, “religion is like an arch resting on one pillar, like a 
bridge ending in an abyss.” The burial customs of the most primitive 


RESURRECTION— IMMORTALITY 


299 


peoples reveal the fact that they believe that this mortal must put on 
immortality. The most ancient literature of the Hindus and the Chinese 
reveals this same hope, and with this same hope the ancient Egyptians 
seemed to be filled. Sages and philosophers of every land and age, as 
well as common people like ourselves, have not been satisfied with any 
other thought. Something within us seems to demand it and something 
without us seems to assume it. — Hilsther. 

“To Depart and Be With Christ.”— Phil. 1:23 (657). 

I. Christ calls death falling asleep. He is using one of the 
phrases which daring and trustful men had coined, and He is giving it 
proof and reality. When He stands beside the bed of Jairus’ little 
daughter He softly says, “Talitha cumi,” “My little lambie, arise.” He 
is awaking a child from sleep. When He stops the bier of the widow 
of Nain’s son He calls, “Young man, I say unto thee. Arise.” He is 
calling one who is at rest back to active life again. When He stands 
at the tomb of Lazarus, dead four days ago, He cries, “Lazarus, come 
forth.” He is calling one who is lying in the rest chamber to the light 
of the day and its duties. As a little child will come in from its play 
when the shadows fall; as a man seeks his rest when his day’s toil is 
done; as a traveler weary and footsore will lie down to renew himself 
at his journey’s end; so, said Jesus, when we die, we sleep. But we 
sleep to wake. 

II. He calls it a going to the Father. This is the word which 
remained unspoken until the end, but it was His most cherished thought. 
When He gathers His disciples together in the upper room, and He 
is upon the eve of His dying, then the word is like a refrain in a 
song, a recurring note of music in His addresses. Again and again 
He repeats, “I go to My Father.” He is like an emigrant who has 
been for years in another hemisphere and in the land of strangers. He 
has been busy with its life and its industries. He has endured its 
hardships and isolation. Now the time of His sojourn is over and the 
hour of His return is come. He is going to the Father. He is going 
home. 

III. He calls it, in this conversation, by a singular word. “They 
spake of His decease.” In the literal and significant meaning of the 
word it was His “exodus.” We cannot doubt why the word was chosen. 
It is the thought of death from the point of view of one who is about 
to go out by it as by a door. How full of light is this word. Death is 
an exodus, a going out from the land of the stranger, from the house 
of bondage, from affliction and thankless toil, from the state of the 
slave. Death is a deliverance and a boon. It is a going through a 
wilderness, with its loneliness and its pain and privation, but it is a 
going through a wilderness upon a journey which is to end in the land 
which is the promise of God. — J. H. Clough, D. D. 

“Because I Live, Ye Shall Live Also.” — John 14:19 (658). 

He lives who once was dead. He did not go through the valley of 
death and come out on the other side to prove to Himself that there 
is life on the other side. He knew it. But He went through and 


300 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


came out to show us that death does not end all. He will conduct 
us into the valley, through the valley, and out of the valley. Rejoice, 
for He lives. Rejoice, because death shall have no more dominion over 
us. We are not going into a blind alley, but into a grand thorough- 
fare. — Selected. 

"But Some Will Say: How Are The Dead Raised Up, And With What 

Body Do They Come?” I. Corinthians, 15:44, replies: "It Is 
Sown a Natural Body; It Is Raised a Spiritual Body” (659). 

A body bearing no relation to the one that was buried would make 
void the lesurrection. “He that raised up Jesus from the dead shall 
quicken your mortal body for His spirit that dwelleth in you.” This 
resurrection body will be fashioned like unto His glorious body. “When 
Christ our life shall appear we shall be like Him.” 

Our Lord, after His resurrection, was not an unclothed spirit. 
“Handle me and see, for a spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see 
Me have.” This same Jesus will return to earth to raise from the 
dead His sleeping saints (for believers do not enter into glory until the 
resurrection), and translate the living believer. “For the Lord Him- 
self shall descend from heaven with a shout . . . and the dead in 
Christ shall rise first, and we who are living and remain shall be caught 
up together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we 
ever be with the Lord.” “Then shall be brought to pass the saying, 
Death is swallowed up in victory.” This will be the first resurrection — 
“they that are Christ’s at His coming.” It will be a triumphant and 
glorious resurrection — “every man in his own order.” 

The day is fast approaching when the archangel will trumpet the 
“assembly” call of God, and they that “sleep in Jesus” shall come forth 
and take up the heavenward march to glory. “Christ the first-fruits, 
afterward they that are Christ’s at His coming.” Then will be fulfilled 
the words “Because I live, ye shall live also.” — Selected. 

"God Is Not the God of the Dead, But of the Living.” — Matt. 22:32 (660). 

There has been in* all ages a vast amount of speculation as to the 
state of the soul, after the death of the body, before the day of the 
resurrection, and many very widely different opinions have been and 
are still held even by good and Christian people. 

It is a question which can only be settled, if at all, by a study of 
the teachings of the Bible. The refined and fine-spun arguments which 
reason can furnish on the probabilities in the case throw very little 
light on the subject and have never yet so satisfied a single soul as to 
cause it to have any well grounded belief or trust in the conclusions 
which reason has come to on the tremendous subject. If we would 
know anything about the matter it will be found in the revelation which 
God has been pleased to make to us, and especially in the teachings 
of Christ. It is a matter which we are all interested in, and I do not 
consider the time wasted, even if after earnest research we are not 
able to come to as definite a conclusion about it as about some other 
points of revelation. 


RESURRECTION— IMMORTALITY 


SOI 

If the Savior had not intended us to know something about it He 
would have remained silent on the subject, which I do not think He 
has done. My research leads me to two conclusions as follows: 

First. That the soul does subsist after death and in some place 
of abode suited to its altered condition. 

Second. That this state is not, in all probability, a state of in- 
sensibility, but of thought, consciousness, content and happiness. — H. 
N. Conry, D. D. 

“Dust Thou Art, And To Dust Thou Shalt Return.” — Gen. 3:19 (661). 

It was a quaint but solemn fancy of the poet, to apostrophize a 
molehill in a churchyard, as containing part, perhaps, of a great com- 
pany of human beings. It is strange, indeed, to think how many 
mortals may meet in that small hillock; how winds and rains may 
there have brought together in death those who never met in life; 
how the warm blood once ran through that crumbling mould; how 
every atom of it claims closest kindred with ourselves! And we re- 
member, too, how science tells us, not as a striking fancy, but as a 
certain fact, that the whole material world is pervaded by the atoms 
-which entered into the material frames of generations that are gone. 
There is something of them in the yellow autumn harvests, and in the 
leafy summer trees; something in the dust which our footsteps stir, 
and which the breeze wafts in play. There is but one generation of 
humankind alive at once; but there are a hundred slumbering in the 
dust together. “All that tread the globe, are but a handful to the 
tribes that slumber in its bosom.” No wonder that men, upon any au- 
thority less certain than that of the Almighty God Himself, should have 
failed to believe that what was so widely dispersed and so completely 
assimilated, should ever be separated, assembled, quickened again. — 
Boyd. 

“If Christ Hath Not Been Raised, Then Is Our Preaching Vain, Your 

Faith Is Also Vain ... Ye Are Yet in Your Sins. Then Also 

They That Are Fallen Asleep in Christ Have Perished.” — 1 Cor. 

15:17, 18 (662). 

I. If this is the final word about Him, there is not a shadow 
of hope. 


“Eat, drink and die, for we are souls bereaved. 

Of all the creatures under heaven’s wide cope, 

We are the most hopeless who had once most hope. 
And most beliefless that had most believed. 

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, 

As of the unjust, also of the just. 

Yea, of that Just One, too! 

It is the one sad gospel that is true, — 

Christ is not risen.” 


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THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


II. But this is not the last word. Rather, it is this, — “Christ hath 
been raised. He is alive forevermore.” The story of Christianity is 
the story of the risen Christ. All that has been done He has done. 
His last promise to His disciples, as He sent them out, was, “Lo, I 
am with you always, even unto the end of the world.” — J. R. Miller, D. D. 

And They Departed Quickly From The Sepulcher With Fear And Great 
Joy; And Did Run To Bring His Disciples Word. — Matt. 28:8 (663). 

On their way to the sepulcher the two Marys are walking together 
in the same dark shadow that from the beginning has shrouded the 
hearts of mourners visiting the last resting-places of their dead. They 
go, looking to find all at the tomb as they saw it left by Joseph and 
Nicodemus on the preceding Friday afternoon. It is as quiet as it was 
then, but in all else how changed! The stone lying at a distance away 
and, where it had stood, a black open doorway instead. The accustomed 
signs of death are gone. Can it be that they had missed the way; 
that they have come to the wrong spot, as is not unfrequently the 
case amid the intricate windings of a modern city cemetery? No, they 
cannot have mistaken either the path or the place. The path from 
Jerusalem is both short and plain. The sepulcher is by itself, in a 
private garden. The place and its surroundings are recognized as 
soon as seen; the same stone-hewn vault, the same rocky shelf on 
which they saw tenderly laid the lifeless body of their Lord. Here 
lay His head, and there His feet. But there where lay His feet are 
now only the linen bandages in which the body was wound, and here 
wrapped together in a place by itself is the napkin that was about 
His head. Even the silence is changed; more profound and painful 
than it would be were the body still here. 

At this so strangely altered appearance the two friends are most 
deeply and painfully perplexed — the perplexity soon turns to affright 
as close beside them is suddenly seen standing, with lightning-like 
countenance and snow-white apparel, an angel of the Lord. Falling 
upon their knees they lean forward, bowing their faces in terror to the 
ground. 

From this terrified suspense they are quickly relieved, however, by 
the loving tones of the angel’s voice which is as fear-dispelling as his 
words: “You seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here. He is 
risen. Come see the place where the Lord lay.” — “From Text to Talk.” 

“Now Are We The Sons of God, And It Doth Not Yet Appear What We 
Shall Be.” — 1 John 3:2 (664). 

The fact of sonship is a fact with an unmeasured sequence. In 
a hollow of the hills sleeps a stagnant pool; no prophet am I, nor 
need be, to foretell its history. Yonder is a silver ribbon on the hill- 
side, a streamlet beginning its journey to the sea. Dare I, who am so 
confident about the future of the pool, venture prophecy of the stream? 
Can I guess what forces it will gather to itself as it winds through the 
valleys, what manifold purposes of men it may come to serve, what 
wealth of cities and of nations it may come to carry on its bosom to 


RESURRECTION— IMMORTALITY 


303 


its home in the ocean? Stagnant pool! I know Its tale; but “living 
water” — “it doth not yet appear” what they shall he. And these things 
are an allegory of the life that is life indeed. 

Let us get hack into the antecedents of this fact of sonship. Out 
of what has it emerged? Look into the heart of man, with its sin, hate, 
rebellion, and uncleanness, until the spirit sinks at the baseness of it. 
It was fairly photographed, this unregenerate heart of man, by One 
who knew “what was in man.” “From within, out of the heart of 
man proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, 
covetousness, wickedness, deceit, luxuriousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, 
pride, foolishness.” What, then, is this marvel of grace? This dark- 
ness enlightened, this stubbornness broken, this foulness cleansed, and 
the heart of a man, photographed thus by One who saw and knew, 
becoming the Bethlehem of a new incarnation of the Son of God! If 
that is dene out of such material — and it is done, is it not? — what may 
we not expect the love of God, by whose power such a wonder is 
wrought, will still do? If “from death to life” is thus possible, from 
life to more life, and yet more, must be possible also. — Sculptors of Life. 

“The Sting of Death Is Sin, And The Strength of Sin Is The Law. But 

Thanks Be To God Which Giveth Us The Victory Through Our 
Lord Jesus Christ”— 1 Cor. 15:56, 57 (665). 

We shall take up these two points to dwell upon. 

I. The awfulness which hangs round the dying hour. 

II. Faith conquering in death. 

I. That which makes it peculiarly terrible to die is asserted in 
this passage to be guilt. We lay a stress upon this expression, — the 
sting. It is not said that sin is the only bitterness; but it is the sting 
which contains in it the venom of a most exquisite torture. And, in 
truth, brethren, it is no mark of courage to speak lightly of human 
dying. We may do it in bravado, or in wantonness; but no man who 
thinks can call it a trifling thing to die. True thoughtfulness must 
shrink from death without Christ. 

1. Now, the first cause which makes it a solemn thing to die 
is the instinctive cleaving of everything that lives to its own existence. 
That unutterable thing which we call our being — the idea of parting 
with it is agony. 

2. The second reason is not one of imagination at all, but most 
sober reality. It is a solemn thing to die, because it is the parting 
with all round which the heart’s best affections, have twined themselves. 

II. We pass to our second subject — Faith conquering in death. 

Let us understand what really is the victory over fear. It may 
be rapture, or it may not. All that depends very much on tempera- 
ment; and, after all, the broken words of a dying man are a very poor 
index of his real state before God. Rapturous hope has been granted 
to martyrs in peculiar moments. 

1. In the first place, brethren, if we would be conquerors, we must 
realize God’s love in Christ. Take care not to be under the law. Con- 
straint never yet made a conqueror; the utmost it can do is to make 


304 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


either a rebel or a slave. Believe that God loves you. He gave a 
triumphant demonstration of it in the Cross. Never shall we conquer 
self till we have learned to love. My Christian brethren, let us remem- 
ber our high privilege. Christian life, so far as it deserves the name, 
is victory. 

There is need of encouragement for those of us whose faith is not 
of the conquering, but the timid kind. There are some whose hearts 
will reply to all this, Surely victory is not always a Christian’s por- 
tion. Is there no cold, dark watching in Christian life; no struggle 
when victory seems a mockery to speak of — no times when life and 
light seem feeble, and Christ is to us but a name, and death a reality? 
“Perfect love casteth out fear.” — Frederick A. Robertson. 

“So Also Is The Resurrection of The Dead. It Is Sown In Corruption; 

It Is Raised in Incorruption; It Is Sown in Dishonor; It Is 
Raised In Glory.”— 1 Cor. 14:42-44 (666). 

I. This body of ours is a body that, whenever and however sown, 
is sown in corruption, in dishonor, and in weakness. These are the 
three capital faults of our present mortal bodies. And the three faults 
are intimately connected and mutually related. They grow into one 
another; they flow from one another; first corruption, then dishonor, 
lastly weakness. (1) Corruption is liability to dissolution and decay. 
The body that is to be sown in corruption is a body capable, or sus- 
ceptible, of decomposition. It may be broken up. And when it is 
broken up, its fragments, or fragmentary remains, may be resolved 
into the constituent elements, or component particles, of which they 
consist. (2) But dishonor also belongs to what is sown: to the bare 
grain, to the mortal frame. Under the rich and rare clothing of joyous 
health, of radiant and smiling bloom, we watch the slow and secret 
gnawing of the insidious element of corruption that is too surely to 
undermine it all. The honor that is so perishable is scarcely honor 
at all. (3) As corruptibility implies dishonor, so it occasions, or causes, 
weakness. It paralyzes physical strength. It paralyzes both strength 
of endurance and strength for action and performance. 

II. None of these defects will be found in the resurrection body. 
That body is incorruptible, indestructible, a meet companion for the 
immaterial and immortal soul. It is to be no clog or restraint, through 
its impotency, on the free soul; but apt and able, as its minister, strong 
to do its pleasure. — Rev. R. S. Candlish. 

“If a Man Die Shall He Live Again?” — Job 14:14 (667). 

God has answered the question very clearly for us. Most of the 
secret things of God and of man are mysteries only because our eyes 
are holden. Lord, open our eyes that we may see. God has written 
the truth of immortality large in several volumes. First is the book 
of nature. Through the laws of the natural world God first spoke to 
man. “Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which 
is natural.” Nature preaches the Gospel of life, the conservation of 
its forces. “Let nothing be lost” is its imperial command. The seed 


RESURRECTION— IMMORTALITY 


305 


is sown into the ground, it dies, decays, but ere long it bursts forth 
into new life. In the furrows of the field God has written the fact 
of resurrection. 

Second, the Bible. Now things are not necessarily true because 
they are in the Bible, but they are in the Bible because they are true. 
The Bible is a book of life. Through it runs, like a scarlet line, their 
idea of life. The patriarchs were buried with their fathers. There 
was the dim idea of a reunion beyond. Job, down in the depths of 
despair raises the question, but in the same breath answers “I wait 
till my change comes.” Psalms and prophecies alike are colored by 
this thought and inspired by their hope. The New Testament throbs 
with it. The apostolic teaching was that of the resurrection. 

Third, the personal Jesus. It was a hope in His own heart and 
He inspired it in the hearts of His followers. “Because I live, ye shall 
live also.” “I go to prepare a place for you.” In His own personal 
life He won the victory over death and the grave and conclusively 
demonstrated the fact of immortality, so that men might no longer 
doubt. 

Fourth. But God has written this truth in our own personal lives 
and experiences. We have certain instincts, certain longings and de- 
sires, certain unrest, unfulfilled yearnings, these will find their answer, 
their corresponding element elsewhere. These undeveloped powers of 
our being will come to fruition, to completion yonder. The incomplete 
life demands a future life. — C. E. Schaeffer, D. D. 

“In My Father's House Are Many Mansions.” — John 14:2 (668). 

I. How much the presence with us of this realized immortality — 
the alert awareness of the reality and proximity of the other world — 
would do to keep earth from becoming too prominent, too predominant, 
in our thinking. 

The sounds and sights of sense press in upon us with such insist- 
ency; they are so clamorous in their efforts to gain and hold and 
monopolize our attention, that these things which though more real, and 
infinitely more important, are unseen, are ever in danger of being thrust 
aside or obscured. 

It is so much easier to see than to perceive; to hear than to reflect, 
to sense things than to spiritually discern them, that the former is apt 
to shoulder the more subtle method aside. We permit earth’s songs 
to silence heaven’s melodies, and earth’s spectacles to eclipse heaven’s 
visions. 

But he who has come under the spell of this “power of an endless 
life;” who has cultivated the habit of bi-worldliness as a permanent 
heart attitude— for him first things are kept first, and earth is a con- 
tinual reminder of heaven. 

II. What a difference the keen realization of these great truths as 
vividly present facts would make in us when bereavement comes into 
our lives. 


306 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


We suffer not merely because of our loss of some dear one. The fact 
of temporary separation is not sufficient to account for the poignancy of 
our grief. But it is rather the dimness and vagueness of our apprehen- 
sion of their continued existence that intensifies our sorrow. It is so 
hard to get away from the graveyard thought which persistently clings 
to us, and in spite of our better knowledge we think of them as captives 
in a tomb. 

III. And then, as a crowning experience, how this distinct realiza- 
tion of the other life robs the thought of death — the fuller entrance into 
that other life — of all dread. — J. H. B. 

“God took him.” — Gen. 5:24 (669). 

I. Early in the Bible record, in the fifth chapter of Genesis, we 
read of the first translation. “And Enoch walked with God: and he was 
not; for God took him.” Beautifully has Dr. J. T. McFarland expressed 
all that we know about Enoch: 

They talked and walked, down many years — 

The way was called The Yale of Tears; 

But he who walked with God received 
Such comfort that he little grieved. 

And walking thus, and talking so, 

The Man and God fared onward slow. 

Until they reach a secret spot — 

God took him, and the man was not. 

II. And it came to pass many centuries later, that Jehovah would 
take up Elijah by a whirlwind into heaven. He, too, had walked and 
talked with God; God took him and he was not. The rushing whirl- 
wind was a fitting accompaniment for the departure of the stormy 
prophet. 

III. But no man ever walked and talked with God as did His 
Son Jesu3 Christ. Forty days after His resurrection He and His dis- 
ciples were on the Mount of Olives over against Bethany. And He lifted 
up His hands, and blessed them. And it came to pass, while He blessed 
them, He parted from them, and was carried up into heaven. — Tarbell. 


XI. HEAVEN. 

REFLECTIONS AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 

Heaven Anticipated (670). 

I heard the other day of an old man who was dying of an excruciat- 
ing trouble. And his minister, doing his poor best to comfort him, said, 
“Courage, friend, you will soon be in heaven.” “Why, sir,” said the old 
saint, “what do you mean? I’ve been in heaven for twenty years.” That 
was the secret of the heroic courage that amazed the world in the early 
Christian martyrs. That was why tender women and fond mothers 
could sacrifice everything they loved for Christ. It was not that they 
were stronger than the heathen; but it was that they saw more than 
the heathen — they saw through the veil into another kingdom, where 
Christ was enthroned at the right hand of God. I stood a few months 
ago in one of those amphitheatres where the Christian martyrs used to 
be put to death. It was a little worn by the storms of countless years, 
but so perfect that bullfights are still held in it. And as I pictured the 
thousands who once filled these seats, and gazed on the battle with the 
wild beasts below, I thought how perfectly they could see everything, 
except the one thing that made all the difference. The crowds saw not 
the vision of the opened heaven. — G. H. Morrison, D. D. 

The Many Mansions (671). 

It is all one house — it is all the Father’s home — and we and the dead 
but dwell in different rooms. Not into any far country do we travel 
in the awful moment when this life is done — not through a shadowy 
and undiscovered land has the soul to journey that it may be with God — 
it is only a passing from one room to the other; a step through the veil 
into a brighter chamber — there is no facing of the storm or of the night, 
for we never are beyond our Father’s roof. I can understand a coun- 
try child being afraid when it is sent out in the darkness on some errand. 
For it goes out alone into the night, and the road is lonely, and every 
shadow awesome. But when a child is called into the dining room that 
it may be with its father and its mother; when it leaves the schoolroom 
with its weary tasks, and goes to the room where its father and mother 
are — that moment, if childhood and fatherhood be real, is one of the 
brightest moments of its day. Brethren, in our Father’s house are 
many rooms, and death is but the leaving of the schoolroom. Not on 
some perilous journey are we sent, out of the home, into the stormy 
night. ’Tis but a step, and lo! another room — brighter and larger than 
the one we left — for our task is over and our school days done, and 
we shall be glad with God for evermore. — Morrison. 

The True Sight (672). 

There is much sorrow which would instantly be turned to Joy if 
those who weep could see things as they really are. The loss of a triend 


308 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


is grieved over; but if we could follow the friend into the glory of 
heaven, we should rejoice. The things we think are calamities and 
causes for sorrow, if we could see them as God sees them, would appear 
to be blessings. If Mary had found the body of Jesus in the tomb, as 
she expected to do, it would have been cause for grief. The empty tomb 
at which she grieved was the reason for the world’s hope. Mary did not 
recognize Jesus. How needless her sorrow was! For if she had known 
Him, joy would have filled her heart. Is it otherwise with us in our 
times of fear? Jesus is beside us, even speaking to us; but we do not 
i know it is He, nor do we hear His words of comfort. We grieve and 
let ourselves be crushed by our sorrows, not knowing that the sorrow 
is only the shadow of a great joy, and that what seems to us emptiness 
and loss is really the blessedness of heaven. — From “Evening Thoughts.” 

Merely Going Home (673). 

The hospital tents had been filled up as fast as the wounded men 
had been brought to the rear. Among the number was a young man 
mortally w r ounded and not able to speak. It was near midnight, and 
many a loved one from our homes lay sleeping on the battlefield — that 
sleep that knows no waking until Jesus shall call for them. The sur- 
geons had been their round of duty, and for a moment all was quiet. 
Suddenly this young man, before speechless, called in a clear, distinct 
voice, “Here!” The surgeon hastened to his side and asked what he 
wished. “Nothing,” he said. “They were calling the roll in heaven, and 
I was answering to my name.” He turned his head and was gone to 
join the army whose uniforms were washed white in the blood of the 
lamb. — Selected. 

Released (674). 

A friend in Ireland once met a little Irish boy who had caught a 
sparrow. The poor little bird was trembling in his hand, and seemed 
very anxious to escape. The gentleman begged the boy to let it go, 
as the bird could not do him any good; but the boy said he would not, 
for he had chased it three hours before he could catch it. He tried 
to reason it out of the boy, but in vain. At last he offered to buy the 
bird; the boy agreed to the price, and it was paid. Then the gentleman 
took the poor little thing and held it out on his hand. The boy had 

been holding it very fast, for the boy was stronger than the bird, just 

as Satan is stronger than we, and there it sat for a time, scarcely able 

to realize the fact that it had got liberty; but in a little while it flew 

away, chirping, as if to say to the gentleman, “Thank you! thank you! 
you have redeemed me.” That is what redemption is — buying back 
and setting free. So Christ came back to break the fetters of sin, to 
open the prison doors and set the sinner free. This is the good news 
the gospel of Christ — “Ye are not redeemed with corruptible things, 
as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ.” 

Other Worldliness (675). 

There are few things that the average Christianity of this day needs 
more than that note of unworldliness, of belonging to another community 
than that in which our lot in the present is cast, which my text prescribes 


HEAVEN 


309 


for us. We must speak the language of the land in which we dwell, but 
we should speak it with a foreign accent. There should be something 
about us, even when we are doing the same things as other people do, 
and which we must to a large extent do, that tells that the same things 
are by us done from such different motives that they become different 
from themselves when done by the men whose cares and interests and 
hopes are “cribbed, cabined, and confined” by the triviality of the 
transient present. 

And that wholesome detachment will enfeeble no work, will darken 
no joy; but it will take the poison out of many a sorrow, and it will make 
small things great, and to be greatly done. He that stands above his 
w'ork can come down upon it with more efficient blows, and the man that 
is lifted above the things seen and temporal will be able to draw all 
the sweetness out of them, to recognize all the nobleness in them, and 
to work nobly upon them. You are the citizens of another community; 
therefore you are to work here worthily thereof. — Alexander Maclaren, 
D. D. 


Going Home (676). 

It was evening, and a woman with the sunset light in her face was 
nearing home. The journey had been long and hard and the sky over- 
cast with clouds. But now she was almost home and the gold and 
crimson lights of sunset were just ahead. It had been a journey full 
of toil and there had been many troubles. She had not minded the hard- 
ships so much, for she had early learned that they were to be expected 
by all who traveled that way. But there had been bitterness and cruel 
hurts. 

The shadows were lowering behind her, but the sunset light gleamed 
before. Seh thought of those whom she had helped and who yet needed 
even greater help; she knew, but they did not; she hesitated to go on, 
though rest and home were just ahead. But perhaps it was not given 
her to help any more, for she was very, very tired. 

So many things had hurt. She had not been ready of speech or ac- 
tion in defense against cruelty and wrong when the shafts had come her 
way; and besides she had been so busy there had not been time to 
return like for like. Or perhaps, and she had not been quite sure about 
that, perhaps it had been best and right for her to endure in silence. 
She was not sure. And if she were to send forth winged shafts of bitter- 
ness, perhaps they might go astray, striking some who already had 
overmuch of pain. What would God have her do? That had always 
been the question. Her philosophy and her faith were plain and simple: 
“We ought to try to do what God wants us to do, no matter what people 
do or say; for pleasing God is all that counts in the long run, anyway.” 
Such had been her summing up in her own homely phrasing. 

But simple and plain as were this faith and philosophy, they had 
cost much. And now, when she was so near home, she did not regret, 
but was glad, as glad as one so weary could be. For the simple faith that 
had not questioned the commands did not now question the promises. 


310 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


Often she thought of what seemed to her the little accomplished; but she 
had tried faithfully always to do her best. And she remembered God’s 
mercy. 

Home was almost in sight. There were rest and peace and joy 
without shadow of pain or sorrow. There was something wonderful 
about this homegoing. For as the light faded in the sunset a new day 
would dawn, a day made glorious by the light which filled it, the light 
of the glory of God. This day would never end. In place of sorrow and 
pain and partings, there would be peace and gladness and meetings won- 
derful in their joy. There would be glory and joy unspeakable. 

And so the weary traveler journeyed on to the sunset. — Herald and 
Presbyter. 


Mothers are Looking Down from Heaven (676). 

I remember in the Exposition building in Dublin, while I was speak- 
ing about heaven, I said something to the effect that at this moment 
a mother is looking down from heaven expecting the salvation of her 
daughter here tonight, and I pointed down to a young lady in the au- 
dience. Next morning I received this letter: 

“On Wednesday, when you were speaking of heaven, you said, ‘It 
may be this moment there is a mother looking down from heaven ex- 
pecting the salvation of her child who is here/ You were apparently 
looking at the very spot where my child was sitting. My heart said, 
‘That is my child. That is her mother/ Tears sprang to my eyes. I 
bowed my head and prayed, ‘Lord, direct that word to my darling 
child’s heart; Lord save my child/ I was then anxious till the close of 
the meeting, when I went to her. She was bathed in tears. She rose, 
put her arms around me, and kissed me. When walking down to you 
she told me, it was that same remark — about the mother looking down 
from heaven — that found the way home to her, and asked me, ‘Papa, 
what can I do for Jesus?”’ — Moody. 

Where Heaven Is (677). 

“You forgot to mention where heaven is,” said a good lady to her 
pastor after a sermon on the better land. “On yonder hilltop stands a 
cottage, madame,” replied the man of God; “a widow lives there in 
want; she has no bread, no fuel, no medicine, and her child is at the 
point of death. If you will carry to her this afternoon some little cup 
of cold water in the name of Him who went about doing good, you will 
find the answer to your inquiry.” — Heavenly Harmonies. 

Earth's Best. (678) — Do not make heaven attractive merely by 
deposing earth. A cheap expedient! Make earth its richest and best, 
and then be able to make heaven still higher. — Phillips Brooks. 

The Heavenly Hope (679). 

Such a hope of the life to come is filled with blessing. The rich 
and learned and powerful, who have faith, may know that what they 
have is but a hint as to what they are to have; and the poor and weak 
may know that some day they will be heirs, with the rich, of the riches 
of the Father’s glory. This is God’s gift to the poor man, and not man’s 


HEAVEN 


311 


efforts to pay off earth’s debts with checks on the bank of heaven. This 
hope of immortality is a blessing rare to the sick and persecuted and 
tempted and neglected and suffering of our race. Through their suffer- 
ings and tears they may discern the meaning of the cross and receive 
its promise of a life when temptations shall no more torment, when 
there shall be no more tears, when rest shall be theirs, and sorrow and 
sighing shall dee away. This same blessing comforts those whose forms 
are bending low with the weight of years. While the snows of winter 
are gathering upon their heads they may have eternal springtime in the 
heart, awaiting that life with Christ, which is “far better.” Immortality 
gives the hope that comforts the heart of the one who sits in sorrow 
because 


“A reaper whose name is Death 
Hath with his sickle keen 
Reaped the bearded grain at a breath 
And the flowers that grew between,” 

and like Israel’s king when his little boy lay dead, we may rise up, and 
putting off the garments of grief may say, “I shall go to him, he shall 
not return to me.” 

Thus the hope of immortality through the living Christ becomes a 
blessing in every condition of life. — S. S. Hilscher, D. D. 

The Open Gates (680). 

The gospel is the offer to all who will have it of eternal life. Christ 
is His own gospel. A mighty change must be wrought in men. On 
this side of the grave they are urged to receive this gospel and to share 
its benefits. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; we must be born 
again through faith in Christ. If a man die he shall live again, but 
only through faith in Christ will his life be one of fellowship with God. 
This faith swings heaven’s gate wide open and makes the child of time 
in the fullest sense the child of eternity. 

Longings For Heaven. (681) — Should longings for heaven fill much 
of our thought and time? Not to such an extent as to prevent the devo- 
tion of all our energies to the work assigned us by the Master. Surely 
not to the breeding of the slightest discontent with the duration of our 
tarrying here. Saint Paul’s position about it (Phil. 1:23) would seem 
to be ideal. 


Sounds From Home (682). 

On the shores of the Adriatic it is said that the wives of the fisher- 
men are in the habit, at eventide, of going down to the seashore and 
singing a stanza of a familiar hymn. After they have sung it they listen 
till they bear, borne by the winds across the sea, anotler stanza of the 
same hymn, sung by their husbands as they are tossed by the gale upon 
the waves. From the shore of heaven the Father calls down to Hia 
beloved, tossed on the waves of passionate humanity, a word of affection 
and approval. — S. S. Times. 


312 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


Death a Genial Angel (633). 

Death should be thought of as a gentle, genial angel, God’s kindly 
messenger sent to convey His permission for our release from earth 
tasks, so that we may with shouting hail the fact that school is out and 
we are going home. “Not of the clod is the life of God; let it mount 
as it will from form to form.” How strange, when we come to think 
of it, to speak of ourselves or our friends as “in danger” when we or 
they draw near the moment of looking into the face of our Redeemer. 
Too many of these phrases, born of blind unbelief and saturated with 
the sludge of the senses, are found on the lips of those who should give 
testimony to another way of beholding matters. — The Riches of His 
Grace. 


Home (684). 

Heaven is a beautiful home. It is a prepared place for a prepared 
people. It is sure for those who love God. And all who love or trust 
Him will be brought there safely. He is able to keep them from falling, 
and to present them faultless before the presence of His glory with 
exceeding joy, and he will do it for all who trust Him. He is the only 
wise God. He is our Saviour. Glory and majesty, dominion and power 
are His now and forever, and He will keep us all along the way until 
He brings us into the home of eternal holiness and happiness and glory. 

Compensation In Heaven (685). 

It will not take long for God to make up to you in the next world 
for all you have suffered in this. As you enter heaven He may say: 
“Give this man one of those towered and colannaded palaces on that 
ridge of gold overlooking the Sea of Glass. Give this woman a home 
among those amaranthine blooms and between those fountains tossing 
the everlasting sunlight. Give her a couch canopied with rainbows to 
pay her for all the fatigues of wifehood and motherhood, and house- 
keeping, from which she had no rest for forty years. Give these newly- 
arrived souls from earth the costliest things and roll to their door the 
grandest chariots, and hang on their walls the sweetest harps that ever 
responded to singers seraphic. Give to them rapture on rapture, cele- 
bration on celebration, jubilee on jubilee, heaven on heaven. They had 
a hard time on earth earning a livelihood, or nursing sick children, or 
waiting on querulous old age, or battling falsehoods that were told about 
them, or were compelled to work after they had got short-breathed, and 
rheumatic, and dim-sighted. Chamberlains of heaven, keepers of the 
King’s robe, banqueters of eternal royalty, make up to them a hundred- 
fold, a thousandfold, a millionfold for all they suffered from waddling 
clothes to shroud, and let all those who, whether on the hills or in the 
temples, or on the thrones or on Jasper wall, were helped and sanctified 
and prepared for this heavenly realm by trial and pain, stand up and 
wave their scepters!” And I looked, and behold! nine-tenths of the 
ransomed rose to their feet, and nine-tenths of the scepters swayed to 
and fro in the fight of the sun that never sets, and then X understood 


HEAVEN 


313 


better than before that trouble comes for beneficent purposes, and that 
on the coldest nights the aurora is brightest in the northern heavens. — 
T. DeWitt Talmage. 

“Meet For The Inheritance” (686). 

Heaven would be an uninteresting realm, and, in some respects, a 
dangerous one if we were not educated for it by means of trials which 
bring out nobility of character. Only after the friction of time is it 
safe to promise a frictionless eternity. — William T. Herridge. 

Heaven Is Christ (687). 

Beautiful are these words of Phillips Brooks: “Heaven is not only 
real because His humanity is there, not merely glorious because His 
greatness is there. It is dear because His love is there.” And beautiful, 
too, are the dying words of Charles Kingsley: “It is not darkness I 
am going to, for God is light. It is not lonely, for Christ is with me. It 
is not an unknown country, for Christ is there.” — Selected. 

Compensation in Eternity (689). 

It is not possible for us to have in this life any grief or misfortune 
that will not find in eternity such alleviation and compensation that 
we shall forget it absolutely, or cease, at any rate, to remember it with 
any pain. Is it some physical defect, like deafness? Our ears will 
hear such wonderful things there that in the first hour we shall almost 
forget that we ever were deaf. Is it lameness? We shall speed there 
with a wish over spaces that stagger our belief. And thus every one 
of earth’s handicaps will be removed in heaven. — Amos R. Wells. 

Identification (690). 

At one time when David Livingstone was engaged In work con- 
nected with his great mission in dark Africa, he was attacked by a 
huge lion of the jungle. The ferocious beast grasped the arm of the 
missionary in his powerful jaws and broke the bone. Livingstone was 
rescued by two friends who had accompanied him, but for a long time 
he was obliged to keep his arm in a sling. He carried the scar of the 
wound as long as he lived. When the faithful natives brought back 
his dead body to his native land, this scar on the arm once broken 
was one of the means by which the remains of the missionary were 
identified by his friends. 

“The Lord knoweth them that are His.” When the final day of 
judgment comes, the Lord will separate His faithful ones from the 
numberless multitude, from the kindreds of all nations. He will know 
His own by the scars they have received for Him in the fight of faith. 
He will know them by their likeness to Jesus Christ. — Homiletic Review. 

The Great White Throne (691). 

A great white throne ... its occupant the carpenter of Naza- 
reth, robed in the majesty of the Ancient of Days. . . . His retinue 
of angels stretch in surging, shimmering ranks beyond the stars, far 
upward to the gate of heaven. Before Him are gathered all nations: 


314 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


Adam from his grave hard by the gates of the lost Paradise; patriarchs 
and prophets, whose eminent ashes long since mingled with common 
clay; the great, from marble sarcophagi and carven shrine; the beggar, 
from his unmarked wayside grave; the child that breathed but once 
and shuddered and expired — all sweep upward at the voice of the arch- 
angel.^ But more important than the scene is the procedure of the 
Judge. He makes a distinct line of separation between the resurrected 
dead. “He shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth 
his sheep from the goats.” Criterion: Past treatment of Himself. He 
came to earth a stranger. Acceptance or rejection of the Stranger the 
basis of judgment. — Rev. S. G. Nelson. 

The Cheerfulness of Heaven (692). 

Cheerfulness has its consummation in heaven. To some minds, how- 
ever, the conception of heaven is not attractive. They have a fellow 
feeling with the youngster who said to his mother, “Mamma, if I should 
die, and go to heaven, do you think Jesus would let me come down to 
earth on Saturdays and play with the boys if I was real good the rest 
of the week?” Heaven, in the imagination of some, is desired as an 
escapement from hell. It is simply selected as the alternative of a direr 
evil. Should such souls pass, unregenerate, into paradise, they would 
come far short of cheerfulness, and would gladly avail themselves of 
a prompt exit to the place prepared for the devil and his angels. 

Heaven is the happy home of multitudinous ransomed ones, who 
have come out of “the great tribulation, and have washed their robes, 
and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” They have entered 
the beautiful Zion above “with songs and everlasting joy.” There are 
no tears in heaven save those wept by saints on earth; and these 
sparkle like gems in the bottle where God preserves them. The “sweet 
fields beyond the swelling flood” are upheaved by no graves, for death 
is a total stranger there, and the bells of the New Jerusalem clang 
forth no funeral knell. “All bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and 
clamor, and evil speaking,” are banished from heaven; and every 
member of the glorious company is “kind one to another, tender 
hearted,” and helpfully loving. At the marriage of Cana the wine ran 
short, and Christ miraculously provided for the guests enough to fill 
six water pots. His guests in heaven drink of the river of unsullied 
pleasures, and are abundantly satisfied with the fatness of the Father’s 
house. At His right hand there is fullness of joy; and every saint is 
satisfied when he awaketh in the likeness of Christ. He is satisfied 
then, and his capacity for satisfaction increaseth w r ondrously. Tho 
law of Leaven is a law of lordly growth; of growth “from glory to 
glory.” — Rev. Henry T. Scholl. 

Future Recognition (693). 

The subject of future recognition is one that occupies the mind 
of thoughtful people as much or more than any other living question. 
While it is a general belief that we shall know each other in heaven, 
as David said in regard to his boy that had died, “I shall go to him, 


HEAVEN 


315 


but he shall not return to me;” and yet how faint is our conception 
of the immediate state of the departed. How many heart-broken moth- 
ers have mourned and wept beside the cold grave as the body of their 
darlings are being placed in the seeming resting place, until the resur- 
rection morn, while really the angels have already escorted their spirits 
to the home of the soul, and have introduced them to kindred spirits 
above. 

While there is but little said in the Scriptures in regard to the 
immediate state of God’s departed ones, yet Jesus left on record His 
statement, assuring us that the soul of the departed does not sleep in 
the grave until the general judgment. In Luke 16 we have Christ’s 
account of the rich man and Lazarus. Christ says, “And it came to 
pass that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abra- 
ham’s bosom.” We learn by this narrative that Christ taught His 
disciples that as soon as the soul of the righteous leaves the body, it 
is carried by angels to a resting place in the paradise of God. It seems 
so reasonable that Christ should have some statement concerning the 
immediate abode of those who die in the Lord. If in this life it is to us 
“a heaven below our Redeemer to know,” then how reasonable it seems 
that heaven is composed of two apartments, one here and one over 
there, and that there is just a step between the two. It seems reasonable 
that Christ intended to teach us that when we leave our friends here we 
join our friends who have gone before. How comforting it must seem to 
the poor, afflicted, suffering saint of God to know that death is only a 
sweet messenger come to “deliver them from all their troubles,” and 
to introduce them to their loved ones who have preceded them. Not 
until we know God’s plans and purposes will we understand how much 
He has done to make us happy here and hereafter. — The Christian 
Advocate. 


Heaven’s Occupations (694). 

IT is true the labors which are now laid on us for food, raiment, 
outward interests, cease at the grave. But far deeper wants than those 
of the body are developed in heaven. There it is that the spirit first 
becomes truly conscious of its capacities; that truth opens before us 
in its infinity; that the universe is seen to be a boundless sphere for 
discovery, for science, for the sense of beauty, for beneficence and for 
adoration. There new objects to live for, which reduce to nothingness 
present interests, are constantly unfolded. We must not think of 
heaven as a stationary community. I think of it as a world of stu- 
pendous plans and efforts for its own improvement. I think of it as 
a society passing through successive stages of development, virtue, 
knowledge, power, by the energy of its own members. Celestial genius 
is always active to explore the great laws of the creation and the 
everlasting principles of the mind, to disclose the beautiful in the uni- 
verse and to discover the means by which every soul may be carried 
forward. In that world, as in this, there are diversities of intellect; 
and the highest minds find their happiness and progress in elevating 
the less improved. There the work of education, which began here, 


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THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


goes on without end; and a diviner philosophy than is taught on earth 
"reveals the spirit to itself, and awakens it to earnest, joyful effort for 
its own perfection. — Emerson. 

Future Life Hidden (695). 

The mother hangs over the cradle wondering whether the child 
will be worker or thinker or dreamer, but nature will not answer. The 
youth spreads the sail, puts out to sea to make his fortune, but even 
his best beloved can not tell whether he shall strike a hidden rock, 
and the craft go down, or whether with weather-beaten sails and laden 
with treasure he shall return in victory from a world-round voyage. 
Gold and gems lie in the earth, but man must uncover them; medicines 
and halms are in the trees for fevers, but man must find them; the 
brain and nerve make up a mental harp, but man must tune the strings; 
a purple flood courses through man’s veins and arteries, but a scholar 
must solve the secret; an unseen continent lies hidden beyond the 
western clouds, but the voyager must discover the new w r orld. Some- 
where are islands of peace “that lift their fronded palms in air,” but 
the vista opens step by step, scene by scene, in orderly sequence. And 
therefore this silence about the life beyond the tomb is natural and nor- 
mal, and to be expected. When we are at the end of our life voyage 
as spiritual discoverers, like the Genoese captain, we, too, shall behold 
perfumed boughs floating in the current, and discern afar off in the 
morning twilight a fire kindled on the beach, while the perfume of a 
sweetness hitherto unknown shall greet the traveler. Out of the deep 
of God’s mind and purpose we came; into the deep of God’s heart and 
will we go; therefore all is well for those who seek the land beyond 
the sea. There is nothing hidden that shall not be revealed, and noth- 
ing revealed that man can find out for himself. — N. D. Hillis, D. D. 

Looking Forward (693). 

\ 

Run familiarly through the streets of the heavenly Jerusalem; visit 
the patriarchs and prophets, salute the apostles and admire the armies 
of martyrs; lead on the heart from street to street, bring it into the 
palace of the great King; lead it, as it were, from chamber to chamber. 
Say to it: “Here must I lodge, here must I die, here must I praise, 
here must I love and be loved. My tears will then be wiped away, 
my groans be turned to another tune, my cottage of clay be changed 
to this palace, my prison rags to these splendid robes; ‘for the former 
things are passed away.’ ” — Richard Baxter. 

God’s Palace. (697) — It comes to this, that when God would build a 
palace for Himself to dwell in with His children, He does not want His 
scaffold so constructed that they shall be able to make a house of it for 
themselves, and live like apes instead of angels. — MacDonald. 

The Way to Heaven. (698) — “Take the first turn to the right, and 
go straight forward.” — Bp. Wilberforce. 


HEAVEN 


ul7 


“That Better Country" (699). 

But it has the same meaning for our own future as for that of 
our friends. When death shall come to us at last, it will not mean 
extinction, but, if we are hid with Christ in God, merely transfer. 
“That better country" will be the new home in which our souls, no 
longer clogged by earth’s limitations, will expand and develop with 
naught to retard their progress. How this scatters the fears which 
clutched our hearts in the night of our ignorance. 

Friends In Heaven (700). 

Are we not richer for their being there? Are we not made nearer 
to heaven by thinking of them there? They have known us so intimately, 
they have known our history, our individuality, our soul wants, our aspira- 
tions, our trials. We have wandered with them hand in hand through 
the tangled wood of life. We have lost our way together. We have 
hungered and thirsted together, and looked out with weary and per- 
plexed star-gazing, now trying this path and now that; and we have 
rejoiced together when our way has been made plain before us. We 
have seen them wrestle and strive with life, as we still must. We 
have seen their heart fail and their hand fall slack, as our full oft 
may do. We have seen them bear the wrench and strain, the cruel 
agony which life forces inexorably upon all, in one or other of its phases; 
and last of all, we have seen them at the river of death. We have 
seen the heaven opening and the angels descending, and they have 
been borne from our sight, and as they rose they were transfigured 
and became as the sons of God. — Harriet Beecher Stowe. 

Our Loved Ones There (701). 

Heaven will be sweeter and more beautiful, more to be desired be- 
cause of the entrance through its shining portals of our loved ones. It 
will be easy for us some day to let go of this life and go to be with 
the multitude of the redeemed who have “washed their robes and made 
them white in the blood of the Lamb.” Let us think of the last and 
sweetest home coming in the Father’s house of many mansions, where 
our dear ones are waiting for us, and some night, God knows how 
soon it may come, they will meet us with outstretched hands. May 
the blessed Christ come into our hearts more completely, and may we 
rest our weary souls on Him. — Christian Work. 

The Heavenly Company (702). 

One of the very greatest attractions of heaven will be its company. 
There the wicked cease from troubling; for all are holy. What a world 
ours would be if there were none but godly people in it, even with 
the imperfections of the present state! But there will be none but the 
children of God there; and everyone of them will be better than the 
best are here. If we have ever enjoyed the company of our fellow- 
believers on earth, when our lips have been unsealed to speak out 
what lies nearest the heart, what will our enjoyment of their fellowship 
be when both they and we are perfect ?— Stalker. 


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THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


Eastern Windows. (703) — Someone has beautifully said that the 
saints and prophets — the ones who even here see more clearly than 
their fellows — are those who lie sleeping with faces toward the uncur- 
tained eastern windows, whose thin eyelids permit something of the 
glory of the other world to glimmer through. 

Eternity and Loneliness (704). 

When you are feeling lonely, think of the hosts of friends you 
will make during the endless ages you are to live in the spirit world. 
Think of the great men and women you will meet there, the beautiful 
ones with whose lives your life will be entwined, the joys of unbroken 
friendship and exalted communion. Can we not endure a little loneli- 
ness, if necessary, during these brief years of preparation? — Wells. 

“1 Live There.” (705) — A devout Scotchman being asked if he ever 
expected to go to heaven gave the quaint reply: ‘‘Why, mon, I live 
there!” All the way to heaven is heaven begun to the Christian who 
walks near enough to God to hear the secrets He has to impart. — Ep- 
worth Herald. 


Drummond’s Illustration (708). 

Suppose I hold in one hand a beautiful quartz crystal, and in the 
other an acorn. There is no comparison between the two as regards 
beauty. My crystal is many times more beautiful than the- dull and 
shapeless acorn, and yet if I put the crystal through all the processes 
in my laboratory, I can make nothing else out of it. It returns at last 
to the same six-sided prism. But if I put my acorn in the ground, by 
and by there arises the majestic oak. The crystal has reached its 
highest development. There is nothing beyond for it to attain to, but 
the acorn is only the germ of what it may be. Now this is the differ- 
ence between morality and real vital spirituality. Morality has reached 
its best development upon earth and oftentimes is far more beautiful 
than spirituality. Ah, but it doth not yet appear what spirituality shall 
be. It is only in the germ here. By and by in the world to come, com- 
pared to what it is now, it shall be as the majestic oak is to the dull 
and shapeless acorn. Do you compare morality with spirituality? Re- 
member you are comparing the dead crystal with the living seed — the 
one is dead, the other has life abiding in it. “He that hath the Son 
hath life.” — Selected. 


“His Guest” (709). 

If we make Jesus the guest of our hearts in this world, he will 
admit us to be His guest in the celestial mansion. When we return 
home from a long journey, it is not the house, the furniture or the 
fireside that gives us joy; it is the sight of the loved ones there. So 
in our Father’s house it will not be the pearl-gate or the golden streets; 
we shall be glad when we see our Lord! In the language of Bonar’s 
sweet hymn — which I heard sung at his funeral — 


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319 


“Christ will be the living splendor, 

Christ the sunlight mild and tender, 

Praises to the Lamb we render, 

Ah, ’tis heaven at last! 

“Broken death’s dread bands that bound us. 

Life and victory around us, 

Christ the King Himself hath crowned us, 

Ah, ’tis heaven at last!” 

— Rev. Theodore L. Cuyler, D. D. 

Heaven’s Estimate of Values (710). 

The deeds that stand highest on the records in heaven are not those 
which we vulgarly call great. Many “a cup of cold water only” will 
be found to have been rated higher than jeweled golden chalices brim- 
ming with rare wines. God’s treasuries, where He keeps His children’s 
gifts, will be like many a mother’s secret store of relics of her children, 
full of things of no value, what the world calls “trash,” but precious 
in His eyes for the love’s sake that was in them. 

All service which is done from the same motive in the same force 
is of the same worth in His eyes. It does not matter whether you 
have the gospel in a penny Testament printed on thin paper with black 
ink, and done up in cloth, or in an illuminated missal glowing in gold 
and color, painted with loving care on fair parchment, and bound in 
jeweled ivory. And so it matters little about the material or the scale 
on which we express our devotion and our aspirations; all depends on 
what we copy, not on the size of the canvas on which, or on the ma- 
terial in which, we copy it. “Small service is true service while it 
lasts,” and the unnoticed insignificant servants may do work every 
whit as good and noble as the most widely known, to whom have been 
intrusted by Christ tasks that mould the ages. — Maclaren. 

The Influence of Heaven on Earth (711). 

Henry Ward Beecher once received a letter begging him to preach 
the next Sunday on hell that the writer might be kept from commit- 
ting a great sin to which he was tempted. Mr. Beecher chose as his 
text for that day “In my Father’s house are many mansions,” and said 
in his sermon that if that verse would not save the man, nothing would. 

An Incorruptible Inheritance (712). 

Incorruptible, i. e., as to its substance. It is not liable to decay. 
Nature looks her best in the days of early autumn. The golden corn- 
sheaves; the gorgeous tints of the fading leaves; the berries of the 
wild rose and the rowan; the undiminished foliage of the forest trees; 
the ruddy wealth of the orchard: but, amid all, our enjoyment is tinged 
with sadness, for we know that decay lies beneath, eagerly at work; 
and that ere long the woodland glade will be strewn with the dying 
leaves, falling in myriads before the gale, and rotting in drenched heaps. 
So, too, mid our happiest converse with beloved ones, a sad foreboding 
sometimes invades our hearts, suggesting that it will not last: the art- 


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THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


less child must leave the mother’s embrace; the brother will choose 
another confidante than the sister whom he dearly loved. But the 
knowledge of God, like our treasure in heaven, cannot corrupt, nor 
can it be stolen from us by any thieving hand. It cannot pass from 
us; nor we from it. It cannot share the fate of any earthly posses- 
sion. Nay, when we are stripped of all things else, and sit like another 
Job amid the wreck of former wealth, then we begin as never before 
to take measure of our eternal treasure; and there arises before us such 
a conception of the magnificence of our inheritance in God that we 
cry, “Give what Thou wilt! without Thee I am poor; and with Thee 
rich; take what Thou wilt away!” — Meyer. 

The Influence of Heaven on Earth (713). 

All history shows that if men do not first look up they will not 
look out; if they do not look ahead into the great tomorrow, they will 
grow hard and cynical and careless as to the people who are around 
them today. God save us from a world untouched, uncleansed and 
uninspired by the influence of a future life. — Robert Francis Coyle, D. D. 

Our Father’s House (714). 

It is all one house — it is all the Father’s home — and we and the 
dead but dwell in different rooms. Not into any far country do we 
travel in the awful moment when this life is done — not through a 
shadowy and undiscovered land has the soul to journey that it may be 
with God — it is only a passing from one room to the other; a step 
through the veil into a brighter chamber — there is no facing of the 
storm or of the night, for we never are beyond our Father’s roof. I can 
understand a country child being afraid when it is sent out in the 
darkness on some errand. For it goes out alone into the night, and the 
road is lonely, and every shadow awesome. But when a child is called 
into the dining-room that it may be with its father and its mother; when 
it leaves the schoolroom with its weary tasks, and goes to the room 
where its father and mother are; that moment, if childhood and father- 
hood be real, is one of the brightest moments of its day. Brethren, in 
our Father’s house are many rooms, and death is but the leaving of the 
schoolroom. Not on some perilous journey are we sent, out of the home, 
into the stormy night. ‘Tis but a step, and lo! another room — brighter 
and larger than the one we left — for our task is over, and our schooldays 
done, and we shall be glad with God for evermore. — George H. Morrison. 

(715.) 

Bright as is the sun and the sky and the clouds, green as are the 
leaves and the fields, sweet as is the singing of birds, we know they 
are not all, and we will not take up with a part for the whole. They 
proceed from a center of love, which is God, but they are not His 
fulness: they speak of heaven, but they are not heaven; they are but 
as stray beams and dim reflections of His image — crumbs from his 
table. — John Henry Newman. 


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321 


Dr. Van Dyke's Picture of Heaven (716). 

Heaven is like the life of Jesus with all the conflict of human 
sin left out. Heaven is like the feeding of the multitude in the wilder- 
ness with everybody sure to get ample to eat. Heaven is like the woman 
sinner from the street who bathed the feet of Jesus in her tears and 
wiped them with her hair. I do not want to know more than that. 
It is peace, joy, victory, triumph. It is life. It is love. It is tireless 
work, faithful and unselfish service going on forever. The way to 
achieve all this is to try to follow Christ today, tomorrow, and the 
day after through prayer and right living. — Henry Van Dyke, D. D. 

The Two Awakings (717). 

The truth which corresponds to this metaphor, and which David 
felt when he said, “I shall be satisfied when I awake,” is that the 
spirit, because emancipated from the body, shall spring into greater 
intensity of action, shall put forth powers that have been held down 
here, and shall come into contact with an order of things which here 
it has but indirectly known. To our true selves and to God we shall 
wake. Here we are like men asleep in some chamber that looks toward 
the eastern sky. Morning by morning comes the sunrise, with the 
tender glory of its rosy light and blushing heavens, and the heavy eyes 
are closed to it all. Here and there seme lighter sleeper, with thinner 
eyelids or face turned to the sun, is half conscious of a vague bright- 
ness, and feels the light, though he does not see the colors of the sky 
nor the forms of the filmy clouds. Such souls are our saints and 
prophets, but most of us sleep on unconscious. To us all the moment 
comes when we shall wake, and see for ourselves the bright and ter- 
rible world w’hich we have so often forgotten, and so often been tempted 
to think was itself a dream. Brethren, see to it that that awakening 
be for you the beholding of what you have loved, the finding, in the 
Bober certainty of waking bliss, of all the objects which have been 
your visions of delight in the sleep of earth! — Alexander Maclaren, D. D. 

(718.) 

We are willing to depart and be with Christ if we are joined to 
Him, indissolubly, in body and soul; and the great secret of not being 
afraid to die is to have Christ in the heart, and to be working for Him. 
If we live for Him, we know that we shall live with Him hereafter. 
Death loses its terrors; we shall be willing to go hence. Care, anxiety, 
sin, suffering, we must have here, and we shall be willing to be released 
from them — to depart. The word “depart” signifies to set out, to sail, 
to let go. It is as if a vessel were fastened to the dock; the cable is 
firmly bound to the shore. Just loose the cable, unfurl the sails, set 
the vessel free; the winds are bearing it out into the open sea. Here 
we are now, working, toiling, but, if God will let the cable unloose, we 
shall sail out into the wide sea of eternity. — Bishop Matthew Simpson. 

Heaven's Interests (719). 

What we regard the greatest events of earth are not those which 
most interest celestial beings. We are jubilant over the advance of 


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THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


science, the progress of art, the achievements of statesmanship, the 
triumphs of war, the reform of old abuse. No doubt God and the angels 
rejoice in many of these. Whenever goodness triumphs, or a noble 
cause gains a victory, their shout answers earth’s fidelity and progress. 
But how often does this world rejoice over smaller things than these? 
We hold jubilee over the pretty triumphs of selfishness, and sing over 
poor plans while heaven weeps. And are we not all too indifferent to 
that which is the beatitude of the skies? — Selected. 

A Crown of Life (720). 

In general, religion was to her a matter of course, not to be dis- 
tinguished from life itself. At least, she gave no sign of inward con- 
flict or struggle. The Beauty and Joy of the Lord set themselves to 
the music which pervaded her being. 

What a long, rich, happy life! And what an afterglow follows the 
setting of her earthly sun! 

“Twelve long, sunny hours bright to the edge of darkness, 

, . . Then ... a crown of stars.” 3 

— Rev. Dr. Ames on Julia Ward Howe. 

Other Sheep (721). 

That little Japanese woman who told the story of her going out 
as a child into the garden in Japan to pray to the unknown God for 
the restoration of her sick mother to health, and who in gratitude be- 
cause of that restoration had loved Him, though unknown, and carried 
His love in her heart, when she came to America and heard in a mission 
church the story of Jesus, and remained after the service and said to 
the leader, “Tell me of Him, for I have loved Him, and have worshiped 
Him, though I never knew His name,” is but the picture of others 
whom God alone can know, who will at last be seen in that great 
multitude out of every kindred, and nation, and clime, who shall sing 
the song of the redeemed and cry, “Worthy is the Lamb that was 
slain; for He has redeemed us unto Himself!” — Behind the World and 
Beyond. 


A Glorious Hope (722). 

Harriet Martineau once said to a Christian: “If I believed in 
immortality, as you believe in it, as you profess to do, I should live a 
far better life than you appear to live. I should strive more earnestly 
and bear more patiently. I do not think I should ever be troubled 
with a fear, or worried with an earthly burden. I think it would be all 
sunlight and joy if I believed as you do in eternal things — in resurrec- 
tion and a life beyond in which all things will be made right.” 

The Scholar’s Heaven (723). 

For the scholar, the thinker, the lover of truth there is a heaven 
no less than for the ignorant and the erring; and an expansion of knowl- 
edge, endless and ever growing, is one element in the prize presented 


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323 


to our ambition when we are urged to “lay hold on eternal life.” For 
learned and unlearned, nevertheless, there is only one way of attain- 
ing the goal. The only way to lay hold on eternal life is to lay a 
hand of faith on Him Who says: “I am the resurrection and the life; 
if a man believe on me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and 
whosoever liveth and believeth on me shall never die.” — Stalker. 

Treasures In Heaven (724). 

Christ’s word about treasure laid up in heaven was illuminated and 
transfigured for me when I passed through my first great sorrow. What 
other treasure is there like some one whom we tenderly love, a darling 
child for instance? And when such a treasure is laid up for us in 
heaven it is that our hearts may follow and be where our treasure is. 
Our hearts in heaven! There is no experience like some such transfer 
of treasure from earth to heaven to give heaven reality to our faith. 
“My little one is there,” the mother heart cries. “I would be there with 
my precious child.” And thereafter as never before heaven is real 
and the attraction of the life. 

The passage of the spirit across the chasm death makes impassable 
to our bodies is like the flight of an arrow carrying the first slender 
thread to the other bank of some stream seen to be spanned by the 
suspension bridge. The first thread is such an one as the arrow can 
carry, but to that is attached one larger and heavier and to that still 
another, until the mighty cable to be the foundation of the bridge is 
safely across the chasm. Then it is only a question of time and faith- 
fulness in work until the bridge is built and life’s traffic has its highway. 
So the faith which follows the flight of the loved one’s spirit across the 
abyss of death draws ever stronger faith and a more confident thought 
after it, until the soul has a highway for itself, a strong thoroughfare 
of faith by which it goes between earth and heaven securely. Heaven 
is joined to earth as the heart’s familiar home. — Rev. Judson Titsworth. 

“The Bonnie Hills” (725). 

Some one illustrates the saint’s anticipation of heaven by the case 
of “a young Scotch girl, who when taken ill in this country, knowing 
that she must die, begged to be taken back to her native land. On the 
homeward voyage she kept repeating, ‘O, for a glimpse o’ the hills o’ 
Scotland!’ Before the voyage was half over it was evident to those 
who were caring for her that she could not live to see her native land. 
One evening, just at the sun-setting, they brought her on deck. The 
west was all aglow with glory, and for a few minutes she seemed to 
enjoy the scene. Someone said to her, ‘Is it not beautiful?’ ‘Yes, but 
I’d rather see the hills o’ Scotland.’ For a little while she closed her 
eyes, and then opening them again, and with a look of unspeakable 
gladness on her face, she exclaimed, ‘I see them noo, and aye they’re 
bonnie.’ Then, with a surprised look, she added, ‘I never kenned be- 
fore that it was the hills o’ Scotland where the prophet saw the horse- 
man and the chariots, but I see them all, and we are almost there.’ 
Then, closing her eyes, she was soon within the vale. Those beside 


324 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


her know that it was not the hills of Scotland, but the hills of glory 
that she saw. Perhaps there are some fair hills toward which you are 
now looking, and for which you are now longing, and you may be 
thinking that life will be incomplete unless you reach them. What 
will it matter if, while you are eagerly looking, there shall burst upon 
your vision the King’s country, and the King Himself comes forth to 
meet you and to take you into that life where forever you shall walk 
with Him in white because you are found worthy? ‘For the sufferings 
of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which 
shall be revealed to usward.’ ” 


HEAVEN 


325 


ILLUSTRATIVE POETRY. 


The Last Turn the Best (726). 

So let the way wind up the hill or down, 

O’er rough or smooth, the journey will be joy. 

Still seeking what I sought when but a boy. 

New friendship, high adventure, and a crown. 

My heart will keep the courage of the quest, 

And hope the road’s last turn will be the best. 

— Henry van Dyke. 

Death Heaven's Gate (727). 

Why do we worry about the nest? 

We only stay for a day. 

Or a month, or a year, at the Lord’s behest, 

In this habitat of clay. 


The best will come in the great “to be”; 

It is ours to serve and wait; 

And the wonderful future we soon shall see, 

For death is but the gate. 

— Sarah K. Bolton. 


The Eternal Gate (728). 

Far off and faint as echoes of a dream, 

The songs of boyhood seem, 

Yet on our autumn boughs, unflown with spring, 
The evening thrushes sing. 

The hour draws near, howe’er delayed and late, 
When at the Eternal Gate 

We leave the words and works we call our own, 
And lift void hands alone 

For love to fill. Our nakedness of soul 
Brings to that gate no toll; 

Giftless we come to Him who all things gives 
And live because He lives. — Whittier. 

It Yet Shall Be (729). 

A sweeter song my soul has heard 
Than angel anthem, lay of bird. 

It cheers my heart in storm and night, 

And makes both storms and darkness bright. 

The sweetest song that comes to me — 

The song of hope — it may yet be! 

Is winter here? Have song-birds fled? 

They have but flown; they are not dead! 


326 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


The snows will melt, and with the spring 
The birds return on joyous wing. 

And flowers that faded long ago 
Will bloom again in summer’s glow. 

Though skies be black, and dark the night, 

The day draws near with blessed light. 

So faces that have vanished here 
In heaven’s bright morn will reappear. 

Sweet voices that are hushed and still 
Will there again our spirits thrill. 

Hopes may have flown, but not for aye. 

True hope will live a deathless day. 

Above the clouds, beyond the night, 

Faith soars and sings in living light. 

Thence comes the sweetest song to me, 

The song of Hope — It yet shall be! 

— H. H. Van Meter. 


Pure Delight (730). 

“There is a land of pure delight 
Where saints immortal reign. 
Infinite day excludes the night. 
And pleasures banish pain.” 


The Future Life (731). 

How shall I know thee in the sphere which keeps 
The disembodied spirits of the dead, 

When all of thee that time could wither sleeps 
And perishes among the dust we tread? 

For I shall feel the sting of ceaseless pain 
If there I meet thy gentle presence not; 

Nor hear the voice I love, nor read again 
In thy serenest eyes the tender thought. 

Will not thy own meek heart demand me there? 

That heart whose fondest throbs to me were given; 

My name on earth was ever in thy prayer, 

And wilt thou never utter it in heaven? 

In meadows fanned by heaven’s life-breathing wind, 
In the resplendence of that glorious sphere. 

And larger movements of the unfettered mind, 

Wilt thou forget the love that joined us here? 


HEAVEN 


327 


The love that lived through all the stormy past. 
And meekly with my harsher nature bore, 

And deeper grew and tenderer to the last. 

Shall it expire with life and be no more? 

A happier lot than mine, and larger light, 

Await thee there; for thou hast bowed thy will 

In cheerful homage to the rule of right. 

And lovest all and renderest good for ill. 

For me, the sordid cares in which I dwell, 

Shrink and consume my heart, as heat the scroll; 

And wrath has left it scar — that fire of hell 
Has left its frightful scar upon my soul. 

Yet though thou wear’st the glory of the sky. 

Wilt thou not keep the same beloved name, 

The same fair thoughtful brow, and gentle eye, 
Lovelier in heaven’s sweet climate, yet the same? 

Shalt thou not teach me in that calmer home 
The wisdom that I learned so ill in this — 

The wisdom which is love — till I become 
Thy fit companion in that land of bliss? 


William Cullen Bryant. 


She Rests (732). 


“She resteth now. No more her breast 
Heaves with its weary breath; 

Pain sits no longer on the brow 
Where lies the calm of death. 

Sunk to her rest like tired child. 

She lies in slumber deep. 

Soft folded in the arms of Him 
Who ‘giveth His beloved sleep/ 

“Nay, doth she rest? No: day nor night 
She resteth not from praise; 

Her spirit, wing’d with rapture, knows 
No more earth’s weary ways; 

But ever toward the Infinite 
Her flight on, upward, does she keep, 
For He gives active tirelessness 
Who ‘giveth His beloved sleep.’ ” 


The Wor.drous Morn (733) 


Dark streams are still dividing 
Between my Lord and me; 


But oh! the wondrous morrow! 
Life without pain or loss — 


Time’s midnight hills are hiding 
The land I fain would see. 


The Saints without their Sorrow, 
And Christ without the Cross! 


328 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL, ADDRESSES 


O Lord, recall Thy banished, 

And home Thy weary bring, 

To view, where night has vanished, 

Their Country and their King! 

— A. R. Cousin. 


“And That Shore Heaven!" (734). 

O Joy! one step ashore, and that shore heaven! 

To clasp a Hand outstretched, and that Hand His 
Who waits my coming, all earth’s fetters riven, 

To share the glory of His saints in bliss! 

To pass, by one short breath, from storm and stress, 

To breathe new air in one unbroken calm! 

To sleep, and wake in undreamt blessedness, 

With conqueror’s crown, white robe, and victor’s palm! 

“But Then We Rest Forever" (735). 

. Light is our sorrow, for it ends tomorrow, 

Light is our death which cannot hold us fast; 

So brief a sorrow can be scarcely sorrow, 

Or death be death so quickly past. 

One night, no more, of pain that turns to pleasure, 

One night, no more, of weeping, weeping sore; 

And then the heaped-up measure beyond measure, 

In quietness for evermore. 

Our sails are set to cross the tossing river, 

Our face is set to reach Jerusalem; 

We toil awhile, but then we rest forever. 

Sing with all saints and rest above with them, 

— Christina Rossetti. 

Beckoned To My Fitting Piace (736). 

“I have but Thee, my Father! let Thy Spirit 
Be near me, then, to comfort and uphold; 

No gate of pearl, no branch of palm I merit, 

Nor street of shining gold. 

“Suffice it if — my good and ill unreckoned, 

And both forgiven through Thy abounding grace, 

I find myself by hands familiar beckoned 
Unto my fitting place. 

“Some humble door among Thy many mansions, 

Some sheltering shade where sin and striving cease, 
And flows forever through Heaven’s green expansion 
The river of Thy peace.” 


— Whittier. 


HEAVEN 


329 


Heaven’s Nearness (737). 

It seemeth such a little way to me. 

Across to that strange country, the Beyond; 

And yet not strange, for it has grown to be 
The home of those of whom I am so fond; 

They make it seem familiar and more dear. 

As journeying friends bring distant countries near. 

Over the River (738). 

“Over the River” — the old, sweet song! 

The road to the rest there is not so long: 

A song and a sigh and a brief good-by, 

And we meet with the dreams ’neath a stormless sky! 

“Over the River” — the song that thrills 
Its music down from the heavenly hills; 

The pain and peril of life’s time past, 

And the rest that is given of God at last! 

“Over the River” — so sweet it seems 
To drift away to the starlit dreams! 

To fear no more the fall o’ night 
“Over the River,” where “love is light!” 

— Atlanta Constitution, 


Far Better (739) 

Oh, safe at home! where the dark tempter roams not, 
How have I envied thy far happier lot. 

Already resting where the evil comes not, 

The tear, the toil, the woe, the sin forgot. 

Oh, safe in port where the rough billow breaks not, 
Where the wild sea moan saddens thee no more, 
Where the remorseless stroke of tempest shakes not, 
When, when shall I too gain that tranquil shore? 

Oh, bright amid the brightness all eternal, 

When shall I breathe with thee the purer air. 

Air of a land whose clime is ever vernal, 

A land without a serpent or a snare? 

Away above these scenes of guilt and folly, 

Beyond this desert’3 heat and dreariness. 

Safe in the city of the ever holy, 

Let me make haste to join thy earlier bliss. 

Another battle fought and, oh! not lost, 

Tells of the ending of this fight and thrall. 

Another ridge of time’s lone mooreland crossed 
Gives nearer prospect of the jasper wall. 


*30 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


Just gone within the veil where I shall follow. 

Not far beyond me, hardly out of sight, 

I down beneath thee in this cloudy hollow. 

And now above me in yon sunny light; 

Gone to begin a new and happier story, 

Thy bitter tale of earth now told and done; 

These outer shadows for that inner glory 
Exchanged forever, oh, thrice blessed One! 

Oh, freed from fetters of this lonesome prison. 

How shall I greet thee in that day of days 

When He who died, yea, rather who has risen, 

Shall these frail frames from dust and darkness raise! 

— Horatius Bonar. 


Face to 

Brief life is here our portion; 

Brief sorrow, short-lived care; 
The life that knows no ending. 

The tearless life is there. 

O happy retribution; 

Short toil, eternal rest; 

For mortals and for sinners, 

A mansion with the blest. 


Face (740). 

And now we fight the battle, 
And then we wear the crown 
Of full and everlasting 
And passionless renown. 

The morning shall awaken. 

The shadows shall decay 
And each true-hearted servant 
Shall shine as doth the day. 


There God our King and portion, 

In fulness of His grace. 

Shall we behold forever, 

And worship face to face. 

— Selected. 


Tears (741). 

When I consider life and its few years, — 

A wisp of fog betwixt us and the sun; 

A call to battle, and the battle done 
Ere the last echo dies within our ears; 

A rose choked in the grass; an hour of fears; 

The gusts that past a darkening shore do beat; 
The burst of music down an unlistening street, — 
I wonder at the idleness of tears. 

Ye old, old dead, and ye of yesternight. 
Chieftains and bards and keepers of the sheep, 
By every cup of sorrow that you had. 

Loose me from tears, and make me see aright 
How each hath back what once he stayed to weep; 
Homer his sight, David his little lad. 


— Lizette Reese. 


HEAVEN 


331 


“Worth Them All” (742). 

“So wing thy flight from star to star, 

From world to luminous world, as far 
As the universe spreads its flaming wall; 

Take all the pleasures of all the spheres, 

And multiply them all through the endless years — 
One moment of heaven is worth them all.” 


The Many Mansions (743). 

So death has lost its terrors; 

How can we fear it now? 

Its face, once grim, now leads to Him 
At Whose command we bow. 

His presence makes us happy, 

His service our delight, 

The many mansions gleam and glow. 
The saints our souls invite. 



At The Dawn 


(744). 


“As from my window, at first glimpse of dawn, 

I watch the rising mist that heralds day. 

And see by God’s strong hand the curtain drawn 
That through the night has hid the world away, 
So I, through windows of my soul, shall see, 

One day. Death’s fingers with resistless might 
Draw back the curtained gloom that shadows Life, 
And in the darkness of Time’s deepest might 
Let in the perfect Day — Eternity.” 


The World Beyond (745). 

A solemn murmur of the soul 
Tells of the world to be, 

As travelers hear the billows roll 
Before they reach the sea. 


When I Go Home (746). 

When I go home may quiet reign, 

And nothing will I say or do. 

To cause regret or needless pain 
In those I love when I go home. 

When I go home, be it with me, 

As one that fully knows the way, 
From dark confusion wholly free; 

May light o’erspread when I go home. 


332 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


When I go home from world like this, 

May thoughts of rest and joy outweigh 

All worldly good and transient bliss. 

While God approves, when I go home. 

When I go home may naught remain. 

To show that heart or brain or hand. 

Had willed or moved in wicked vein; 

Well done be said when I go home. 

When I go home may royal guide. 

My last great journey shield and cheer; 

No fear nor evil shall betide, 

No good-bye pangs, when I go home. 

When I go home, welcome to me. 

May joy of life supreme impart. 

Sweet shall the peace forever be, 

A victory won, when I go home. 

When I go home, may stars that shine, 

In diadems of fadeless light, 

(For winning souls a pledge divine) 

Inspire my song when I go home. 

When I go home, shall I not find, 

My loved and lost in sweet repose. 

Who passed the gate on Christ reclined 
To dwell with Him, when I go home? 

When I go home, my glory crown 
Will be that Christ is there enthroned; 

Where heaven’s host to Him bow down, 

I shall have place, when I go home. 

— Rev. T. J. Joslin, in Michigan Christian Advocate. 


Yearning for the Homeland (747). 

I am longing for the homeland 
And its rest from sin and strife; 

I am yearning for the welcome 
With its warmth of light and life; 
And the days seem long and weary 
’Mid the earth scenes dark and dreary 
While I wait till my Redeemer comes 
With angel guards for me. 


HEAVEN 


333 


O, I long to speed the story 
Of the coming of my King, 

Until all who love my Saviour 
Hear with joy the welkin ring! 

Though the waiting-time is weary. 

And the midnight darkness dreary, 

I rejoice; for soon the morning dawns 
To all eternity. 

O the homeland, blessed homeland. 

With its bliss beyond compare! 

How our ardent souls are yearning 
For the joys that wait us there! 

And we haste to barge our treasure 
On the river of Thy pleasure 
For the home where joy shall wake our song 
Throughout eternity. 

— Worthie Harris Holden. 

The City Beautiful — “Precious in the Sight of the Lord is the Death of 
His Saints." — Psa. 116:15 (748). 

Sometimes when the day is ended 
And its round of duties done, 

I watch at the western windows 
The gleam of the setting sun. 

When my heart has been unquiet 
And its longings unbeguiled 
By the day’s vexatious trials 
And cannot be reconciled, 

I look on the slope of the mountains 
And o’er the restless sea, 

And I think of the beautiful city 
That lieth not far from me. 

And my spirit is hushed in a moment 
As the twilight falls tender and sweet, 

And I cross in fancy the river, 

And kneel at the Master’s feet. 

And I rest in the shade that there falleth 
From the trees that with healing are rife — 

That shadow the banks of the river— 

The river of water of life. 


334 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


And some time, when the day is ended. 

And the duties He gave me are done, 

I shall watch at life’s western windows 
The gleam of the setting sun. 

I shall fall asleep in the twilight 
As I never have slept before. 

To dream of the beautiful city. 

Till I waken to sleep no more. 

There will fall on my restless spirit 
A hush, oh, so wondrously sweet, 

And I shall cross over the river 
To rest at the Master’s feet. 

— Boston Globe. 

Perils O’er (749). 

“Safe home, safe home in port, 

Rent cordage, shattered deck! 

Torn sails, provisions short! 

And only not a wreck. 

But, O, the joy upon the shore. 

To tell our voyage perils o’er.” 

Do They Think of Me In Heaven? (750). 

I am thinking of a city, with its streets of shining gold, 

Gates of pearl and walls of jasper, with their glories manifold; 

Of the house of many mansions where the ransomed spirits dwell. 

And the glad, exultant chorus which their joyous voices swell. 

O! I seem almost to hear them as their songs of praise they sing 
To the Saviour who redeemed them, hailing him their Lord and King! 
And I wonder if among that throng beside the glassy sea, 

With their crowns and palms of victory, there are some who think 
of me. 

In that choir are souls translated who on earth to me were dear. 
Friends to whom my heart clung fondly as we walked together here, 
And the light of day seemed darkened as they said their last good-bys 
And from earthly habitations passed to mansions in the skies. 

Ay, I know they reached their haven in the city of their God, 

For their trust was stayed on Jesus and His saving, cleansing blood; 

But if only some least message might be wafted o’er the sea 

From that mystic shore to tell me that they sometimes think of me! 

Oft it seems when worn and weary with the burden and the heat. 

Still I toil while hope seems waning, face to face with grim defeat 
When my fainting soul is longing for a word of love or cheer 
To sustain its failing courage and to banish grief and fear. 

That the gloomy way would brighten all its dreary length along. 

And my mouth be filled with laughter and my tongue with happy song. 
That my heart would bound with gladness and my toil a joy would be, 
Could I know that up in heaven there are souls who think of me. 


HEAVER 


335 


Hush, my soul; the Master speaketh: “Keep thy garments undeflled; 
Doubt not; fear not; can a mother e’er forget her helpless child? 

Yea, she may forget, yet will not I forget, but still be true; 

Thou shalt prove my love unfailing and my mercies ever new.” 

I will take the strength He giveth, lift the burden, tread the way 
He appointeth, till it brighten to His perfect, cloudless day; 

And whatever lot await me, this my sweetest thought shall be. 

That the tend’rest Heart in heaven truly, kindly thinks of me. 

—Ida M. Budd. 


The Children Up in Heaven — “And the Streets of the City Shall Be Full 
of Boys and Girls Playing in the Streets Thereof.” — Zech. 8:5 (751). 

“Oh, what do you think the angels say?” 

Said the children up in heaven; 

“There’s a dear little girl coming home today. 

She’s almost ready to fly away 
From the earth we used to live in; 

Let’s go and open the gates of pearl, 

Open them wide for the new little girl,” 

Said the children up in heaven. 

“God wanted her here where His little ones meet,” 

Said the children up in heaven; 

“She shall play with us in the golden street; 

She has grown too fair, she has grown too sweet 
For the earth we used to live in; 

She needed the sunshine, this dear little girl. 

That gilds this side of the gates of pearl,” 

Said the children up in heaven. 

“So the King called down from the angels’ dome,” 

Said the children up in heaven; 

“ ‘My little darling, arise and come 

To the place prepared in the Father’s home. 

The home the children live in.’ 

Let’s go and watch the gates of pearl. 

Ready to welcome the new little girl,” 

Said the children up in heaven. 

“Far down on the earth do you hear them weep?” 

Said the children up in heaven; 

“For the dear little girl has gone to sleep! 

The shadows fall, and the night clouds sweep 
O’er the earth we used to live in; 

But we’ll go and open the gates of pearl! 

Oh, why do they weep for their dear little girl?” 

Said the children up in heaven. 


336 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


“Fly with her quickly, O angels, dear!” 

Said the children up in heaven; 

“See — she is coming! look there! look there! 

At the jasper light on her sunny hair, 

Where the veiling clouds are riven!” 

Ah! hush, hush, hush! All the swift wings furl! 

For the King Himself, at the gates of pearl, 

Is taking her hand, dear, tired little girl, 

And is leading her into heaven. 

— Edith Gilling Cherry. 


Enraptured Thought (752). 

“There is a land mine eye hath seen, 

In visions of enraptured thought, 

So bright that all which spreads between 
Is with its radiant glories fraught.” 


Beyond (753). 

It seemeth such a little way to me 
Across to that strange country — The Beyond; 
And yet, not strange, for it has grown to be 
The home of those whom I am so fond. 

They make it seem familiar and most dear, 

As journeying friends bring distant regions near. 

So close it lies, that when my sight is clear 
I think I almost see the gleaming strand. 

I know I feel those who have gone from here 
Come near enough sometimes to touch my hand. 
I often think, but for our veiled eyes 
We should find heaven right around about us lies. 

I cannot make it seem a day to dread, 

When from this dear earth I shall journey out 
To that still dearer country of the dead, 

And join the lost ones, so long dreamed about. 

I love this world, yet shall I love to go 
And meet the friends who wait for me, I know. 

I never stand above a bier and see 
The seal of death set on some well-loved face 
But that I think, “One more to welcome me, 

When I shall cross the intervening space 
Between this land and that one ‘over there’; 

One more to make the strange Beyond seem fair." 


HEAVEN 


337 


And so for me me there is no sting to death, 

And so the grave has lost its victory. 

It is but the crossing — with a bated breath. 

And white, set face — a little strip of sea, 

To find the loved ones waiting on the shore, 

More beautiful, more precious, than before. 

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox. 

Our Thought of Heaven (754). 

Life changes all our thoughts of heaven; 

At first we think of streets of gold, 

Of gates of pearl and dazzling light. 

Of shining wings and robes of white, 

And things all strange to mortal sight. 

But in the afterward of years 
It is a more familiar place — 

A home unhurt by sighs or tears, 

Where waiteth many a well-known face. 

With passing month it comes more near. 

It grows more real day by day; 

Not strange or cold, but very dear — 

The glad homeland not far away. 

Where none are sick, or poor, or lone. 

The place where we shall find our own. 

And as we think of all we knew, 

Who there have met to part no more. 

Our longing hearts desire home, too. 

With all the strife and trouble o’er. 


"Pas* Over to Thy Rest” (755). 


From this bleak hill of storms, 
To yon, warm, sunny heights, 
Where love forever shines, 

Pass over to thy rest, 

The rest of God! 

From hunger and from thirst, 
From toil and weariness, 

From shadows and from dreams, 
Pass over to thy rest, 

The rest of God! 

From weakness and from pain, 
From trembling and from strife. 
From watching and from fear. 
Pass over to thy rest, 

The rest of God! 


From vanity and from lies, 
From mockery and from snares, 
From disappointed hopes, 

Pass over to thy rest. 

The rest of God! 

From unrealities. 

From hollow scenes and change, 
From ache and emptiness, 

Pass over to thy rest, 

The rest of God! 

From this unanchored world. 
Whose morrow none can tell. 
From all things restless here, 
Pass over to thy rest, 

The rest of God! 

— H. Bonar. 


/ 


338 THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


Brief Life Is Here Our Portion (756). 


Brief life is here our portion, 

Brief sorrow, short-lived care: 

The life that knows no ending, 
The tearless life, is there. 

O happy retribution! 

Short toil, eternal rest; 

For mortals and for sinners 
A mansion with the blest! 

There grief is turned to pleasure, 
Such pleasure, as below 

No human voice can utter. 

No human heart can know. 

And now we fight the battle, 

But then shall wear the crown 

Of full and everlasting 
And passionless renown. 


And now we watch and struggle, 
And now we live in hope. 

And Sion, in her anguish. 

With Babylon must cope. 

But He whom now we trust in 
Shall then be seen and known, 
And they that know and see Him 
Shall have Him for their own. 

The morning shall awaken, 

The shadows shall decay, 

And each true-hearted servant 
Shall shine as doth the day: 

Yes; God, our King and Portion, 

In fulness of His grace. 

We then shall see for ever. 

And worship face to face. 


O sweet and blessed country, 

The home of God’s elect! 

O sweet and blessed country, 

That eager hearts expect! 

Jesus, in mercy bring us 
To that dear land of rest; 

Who art, with God the Father, 

And Spirit, ever blest. 

— Bernard of Cluny. 


From Glory Unto Glory (757). 

“From glory unto glory” of loveliness and light, 

Of music and of rapture, of power and of sight, 

“From glory unto glory” of knowledge and of love, 

Shall be the joy of progress awaiting us above. 

“From glory unto glory,” with no limit and no veil, 

With wings that cannot weary, and hearts that cannot fail; 
Within, without, no hindrance, no barrier, as we soar, 

And never interruption to the endless “more and more.” 

For the infinite outpourings of Jehovah’s love and grace, 
And infinite unveilings of the brightness of His face, 

And infinite unfoldings of the splendor of His will, 

Meet the mightiest expansions of the finite spirit still. 


“Far Frae Hame” (759). 

I am far frae my hame, an’ I’m weary aftenwhiles, 

For the langed-for hame-bringing, an’ my Father’s welcome smiles, 

I’ll ne’er be fu’ content until my een do see 

The gowden gates of heaven, an’ my ain countrie. 


HEAVEN 


333 


The earth is flecked wi’ flowers, many-tinted, fresh and gay; 

The birdies warble blithely, for my Father made them sae; 

But these sichts an’ these soun’s will as naething be to me 
When I hear the angels singing in my ain countrie. 

I’ve his gude word of promise that some gladsome day the King 
To His ain royal palace His banished hame will bring 
Wi’ een and wi’ heart running owre we shall see 
The King in His beauty an’ our ain countrie. 

He’s gratefu’ that hath promised, He’ll surely come again, 

He’ll keep His tryst wi’ me, at what hour I dinna ken; 

But He bids me still to wait, an’ ready aye to be 
To gang at ony moment to my ain countrie. 

— Scotch Song. 


Journey’s End (760). 

No way so long but find its goal. 

No path so steep for struggling soul 
But gains at last the mountain’s crest 
With vision bright and well-earned rest. 

And when life’s race is nobly run; 

It’s battle fought; its victory won, 

God will make up its cost to me 
Throughout a blest eternity. 

— J. H. B. 


Yours and Mine (761). 

Where bide they all? 

Dear friends of yesterday, last year and long ago, 
Who walked with us when life was all aglow 
And rainbows spanned the gloom. 

Not far away we know — 

They’re only gone we trow. 

Into the next room. 

How sweet and strange! 

We hear their tender voices as in olden days. 
While we drift backward into sunny bays 
With lilies all abloom — 

In murmurs low they say: 

“Love lights the mystic way 
Into the next room.” 


340 THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 

Years wear apace. 

Days dark with heavy mist now deep’ning into rain, 

Close down upon us, and we view with pain 
The spectral shadows loom, — 

A mournful gleam! and lo. 

We too lift latch and go 
Into the next room. 

—Etta M. Gardner. 






HEAVEN 


341 


TEXTS AND TREATMENT HINTS. 

“In My Father's House Are Many Mansions; If It Were Not So, ! Would 

Have Told You; For I Go To Prepare a Place For You. And If I 

Go and Prepare a Place For You, I Come Again, and Will Receive 

You Unto Myself; That Where I Am, There Ye May Be Also." — 

John 14:2, 3 (762). 

For some reason, nowadays, we are not much concerned about 
heaven. The life we know is full, absorbing, and brief. It is a man’s 
work. Heaven as pictured by winged cherubs and diaphonous angels 
does not appeal to us; it does not suggest a man’s work. 

In one experience we all are alike — we all were born. Another 
inevitable experience awaits us all — we all shall surely die. We ought 
to be concerned about what is beyond. It is certain that we cannot 
come back and try life again. 

The question. On what condition is heaven to be attained? divides 
itself into two parts, Where and what is heaven? and, How can we get 
there? When we have answered the one we can quickly settle the 
other. — Stimson. 

The Privileges of Heaven — Rev. 22:1-11 (763). 

(1) The Throne of God and of the Lamb (v. 3). Their presence, 
guiding providence. (2) They shall see his face (v. 4), which only 
the pure in heart can see. The power and joy of intimate personal 
communion with God and Christ. (3) His name, representing all that 
God is in character, shall be in (on) their foreheads (v. 4), marking 
them as His children, and showing in their very appearance the heavenly 
character. (4) The Lord God giveth them light (v. 5). Direct inspira- 
tion, the illumination of the Spirit. The light is for all without dis- 
tinction, doing for us spiritually all that light does for us in nature. 
(5) The water of life, freely. (6) The fruits of the tree of life. (7) The 
kings of the earth shall bring their glory into it; all that is good and 
desirable in this world shall belong to the perfect state. Nothing good 
shall be excluded, nothing banned. He shall inherit all things. (8) And 
they shall reign for ever and ever. He shall reign over himself, no 
longer "a heritage of woe," but “crowned and mitred o’er thyself reign 
thou.” He shall reign over all things so that everything on earth and 
in heaven shall minister to His service in the kingdom of heaven. — 
Peloubet. 

Our High Privilege. (764) — “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, 
neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath 
prepared for them that love Him. But God hath revealed them unto us 
by His Spirit.” — 1 Cor. 2:9, 10. 

“Blessed Are the Dead That Die In the Lord" — Rev. 14:13 (765). 

I. Death is a curse. My text says, “Blessed are the dead." Still 
death is a curse. Separate and apart from the consolations of Chris- 
tian faith, death is a tremendous evil. Nature shrinks from it shud- 


842 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


dering. In most cases death presents the unmistakable features of a 
tremendous curse, being attended with sufferings which, however un- 
pleasant to think of, it is well to anticipate, that we may he prepared 
for the worst, and, fortified by faith, may withstand the rude shocks 
of dissolution. 

II. Death is a blessing. The union which is formed between Christ 
and His people being one of incorporation, and not merely one of 
co-operation, what the one is, the other is; and where the one is, the 
other is; and as the one feels, the other feels: and as our bodies and 
their limbs have all things in common, or the branches and trunk of a 
tree have sap in common, so Jesus and His people have all things in 
common. To be in Christ, then, to be in the Lord, implies that we 
shall infallibly enjoy all the blessings, temporal, spiritual, and eternal, 
which He shed His blood to purchase, these being secured to us by 
the great oath of God and the bonds of a covenant which is well 
ordered in all things and sure. 

III. Death is a blessing as introducing us into a state of rest. 
(1) At death the believer rests from the toils of life. (2) At death 
the believer rests from the cares of life. Faith is often weak, and man 
is fearful; and so our life has many a troubled dream, that fills those 
with fears and terrors who are all the time safely folded in a Father’s 
arms. (3) At death the believer rests from the griefs of life. “Many 
are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord will deliver him out of 
them,” if never before, at death. Death cures all griefs; and his own 
best physic and physician, he applies the most healing balm to the 
wounds his own hands have made. No more true or beautiful way of 
announcing a good man’s death than the old-fashioned phrase, “He 
is at rest.” — Dr. Guthrie. 

41 1 Will See You Again”— Jno. 16:22 (766). 

Jesus implies that we are to be together and know one another in 
that world, even as we are together and know one another here. He 
said to His disciples: “Ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging 
the twelve tribes of Israel”; and again those wonderful words: “I will 
see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man 
taketh from you.” And yet again those dear words: “Rejoice not, 
that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your 
names are written in heaven.” These are only suggestions of the many 
words which our Lord spoke, proving that His children are to know 
each other even as they are to know Him in the life beyond. — Tompkins. 

“Things That Are Above”— Col. 3:2 (767). 

What are the things that are above? (1) The perfect standard. 
In the sanctuary above are the golden scales and weights. The ideal 
of righteousness is in the heavens; we must not compare ourselves with 
ourselves; we must be measured by the standard that is on high. 
Morality may be a mere attitude or posture, a calculated and mechanized 
conduct. Judged by the standard that is above, morality may be one 
of the calculations and tricks of hypocrisy. (2) The fountain of grace. 


HEAVER 


343 


Earthly wells cannot satisfy our thirst. The whole conception of re- 
demption begins in heaven and returns to the glory of heaven. The 
law is a fact which science might have discovered, which indeed prides 
itself on discovering; but grace is divine revelation. We have come 
to see that grace may be the higher law. It is an error to suppose that 
grace is a mere sentiment. Grace is the pity of righteousness. (3) The 
brightest hope. “If in this life only we have hope, we are of all men 
most miserable.” The lights are well above. It is impossible for the 
earth to be anywhere but under our feet; the noonday sun is always 
above our heads. The lights we strike are always perishing in the very 
use. As the perfect standard is above, so, of course, is the perfect 
discipline. “He that hath this hope purifieth himself.” The hope does 
not lull us into criminal slumber, it awakens and quickens us into the 
highest activity of self-culture and social service. To know the full 
meaning of “things that are above” we must pass through the gate of 
death. We die to live. “It doth not yet appear what we shall be.” 
Our earthly house of this tabernacle is doomed, a doom in which we 
acquiesce, because we have a house not made with hands. The pursuit 
of “things that are above” elevates the whole range of human thought, 
and unites in the true socialism all the interests of the world. In all 
spheres of life a man bears the impress of his own ideals. How noble 
then and how glorious should be the life of him who draws his whole 
motive and encouragement not from the things that perish, but from 
the “things that are above?” Do not let us talk about these things; 
in God’s name and strength let us try to live them. — Parker. 


“Let Not Your Heart Be Troubled”— John 14:3 (768). 

Why? Because you will soon follow Me through death, and death 
will bring us together again? Not so. “I will come again and receive 
you unto Myself.” “Ye men of Galilee,” said the angels, “why stand 
ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus shall” — what? Soon take 
you away from sorrow by death? Not so. “Caall so come in like man- 
ner as ye have seen Him go.” “The Lord shall descend from heaven 
with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and the trump of God” — 
so says Paul to the sorrowful of his day. “The dead in Christ shall 
rise first, then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up to- 
gether with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; where- 
fore comfort one another with these words.” So it always is. Not our 
going to the Lord in death, but the Lord’s coming for us in glory is 
the grand consolation and hope. The early Christians were described 
as those who “love His appearing,” who “wait for God’s Son from 
heaven.” Could most Christians now be so described? Has not this 
joyous hope, this eager longing for the Lord’s personal return, almost 
died out of the Church? We lose immensely by this. Both for the 
quickening of zeal and for victory over sorrow and despair, we need 
to have this blessed hope a far more constant inmate of the breast. 
Sorrow and sighing would far more quickly fly away, if we but listened 
more joyfully to the sweet words, “I will see you again, and your 


344 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you.” If He 
Who so intensely loves us says, “Surely I come quickly,” well may every 
heart that loves Him say, “Amen, even so, Come, Lord Jesus.” — Knight. 

All Tears Wiped Away (769). 

“And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there 
shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there 
be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.” — Rev. 21:4. 
God wiping away all Tears. 

The subject teaches — 

I. A lesson of resignation. 

II. A lesson of gratitude. The same Hand which chastises will 
one day wipe away our tears. It will not be long that we must wait 
before the faithfulness of God’s word will be established. — J. N. Norton. 

“In My Father’s House Are Many Mansions: If It Were Not So I Would 

Have Told You. I Go To Prepare a Place For You. And If I Go 

And Prepare a Place For You, I Will Come Again, And Receive You 

Unto Myself; That Where I Am, There Ye May Be Also. And 

Whither I Go Ye Know, And The Way Ye Know.”— John 14:2-4 (770). 

How clear and satisfying a view of the life to come is presented 
in these words of our Saviour’s! So positive an affirmation of its reality 
from the lips of one who came forth from God puts to silence the 
denials of unbelief. All speculations respecting the future state are 
valueless to those who have looked upon this picture of home life 
beyond the grave. How cheering in view of earthly conflicts, and what 
a stimulus to untiring activity in Christian work! 

Into this land of many mansions, or abiding places, the Lord has 
gone as the head and representative of ransomed humanity. Our hope, 
as an anchor of the soul, is sure and steadfast, entering into that 
which is within the veil, whither the forerunner has for us entered, 
even Jesus. There He reigns for the overthrow of sin; and when He 
has accomplished His purpose of mercy in the hearts and through the 
agency of His faithful followers. He receives them to Himself that they 
may share His glory. 

Nor need any one go astray. Christ is the way. Trustful reliance 
upon Him and His finished work will secure all the blessings that are 
wrapped up in the terms, Home and Father. — Sommerville. 

“Where I Am There Ye May Be Also” — John 14:3 (771). 

I. This dreadful strangeness of death is two-fold: It is first an 
unknown journey. 

II. It is finally an unknown destination. Our souls are to be 
hurled away by an unknown storm; they are to be hurled at last upon 
an unknown shore. 

III. And yet for millions, yea, for millions multiplied, all this dread- 
fulness has been done away. They have heard and believed these words 


HEAVEN 


345 


of Christ, the twofold contradiction of our twofold fears; the last journey 
will not he desolate nor lonely, for He “will come again and receive 
you”; the eternal destination is no longer strange and dreadful, for 
He is gone “to prepare a place for you,” sweetly saying, “Where I am 
there ye may be also.” We are not to be swept away by a strange 
storm, but to drift gently out on summer sea. 

“Then Shall I Know Even As Also I Am Known” — 1 Cor. 13:12 (772). 

The First Five Minutes after Death. 

I. At our entrance on another state of existence we shall know 
what it is to exist under entirely new conditions. What will it be to 
find ourselves with the old self — divested of that body which has clothed 
it since its first moment of existence — able to achieve, it may be, so 
much, — it may be, so little; living on, but under conditions which are 
so entirely new. This experience alone will add no little to our exist- 
ing knowledge, and the addition will have been made during the first 
five minutes after death. 

II. And the entrance on the next world must bring with it a knowl- 
edge of God such as is quite impossible in this life. His vast, His 
illimitable life, will present itself to the apprehension of our spirits as 
a clearly consistent whole — not as a complex problem to be painfully 
mastered by the efforts of our understandings, but as a present, living, 
encompassing Being who is inflecting Himself upon the very sight, 
whether they will it or not, of His adoring creatures. “Thine eyes 
shall see the King in His beauty” — They were words of warning as 
well as words of promise. 

III. At our entrance on another world we shall know ourselves as 
never before. The past will be spread out before it, and we shall take 
a comprehensive survey of it. One Being there is Who knows us 
now, Who knows each of us perfectly. Who has always known us. 
Then, for the first time, we shall know ourselves even as also we are 
known. We shall not have to await the Judge’s sentence; we shall 
read it at a glance, whatever it be, in this new apprehension of what 
we are. — H. P. Liddon. 

“Sorrow And Sighing Shall Flee Away”— Is. 25:10 (773). 

They shall become obsolete words, having first become obsolete 
facts. Explain the meaning of the word “obsolete.” Show how some 
words have passed out of use. Show that the time is coming when 
such words as “pain,” “sorrow,” “jealousy,” “sighing,” “sin,” will be 
absolutely lost to human memory. New words will supersede old terms. 
Instead of such words as we have now given, there shall come up such 
words as “love,” “holiness,” “peace,” “joy,” “hope.” 

Construct a sentence made up of obsolete English words. By this 
illustration show that there shall be a similar obsolescence in religious 
or spiritual phraseology. Construct a sentence full of such words as 
“pain,” “sin,” “misery,” “heart-break,” and take that sentence to men 


246 THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 

who have been in heaven for a century and ask them to read it. They 
could not! The things signified having passed away, the signs which 
represented them have also perished. — Joseph Parker, D. D. 

“That Where I Am There Ye May Be Also” — John 14:2 (774). 

If you ask what shall he the nature of that life we are to live after 
death, we can answer that it will not be so very different from our 
present life. Eternal life is a present possession. It is the Christ-life 
within us. The essential elements will remain the same, the incidental, 
the accidental things will be done away. 

It will be a sensuous life, not a sensual life, but a life in which 
we shall still have use for the senses. These will then just come to 
their fullest and higher degree and acuteness. Here we see through a 
glass darkly, there face to face. Here we must adjust our lenses, there 
we shall see eye to eye. We shall hear the new song and shall touch 
and handle the things of God. 

It will be an intellectual life. Our faculties of knowledge shall be 
heightened, and we shall know as we are known. Our knowledge shall 
no longer be partial but complete. 

It will be a spiritual life, it is the home of the soul. We shall not 
be less human but more really and ideally such. Three things we shall 
take with us from this life into the next: Our thoughts, our feelings, 
our will. What the character of that life shall be depends very largely 
upon what the character of my present life has been. 

An Alpine traveler fell down into a stream of water that carried 
him beneath a tunnel of rocks until the stream flowed forth into the 
beautiful Rhine. So at death we plunge into the deep, dark river, but 
its waters flow on until they join that crystal sea just below the throne. 
Therefore I do not fear death. “In the night of death hope sees a star 
and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing.” — C. E. Schaeffer, D. D. 

“And The Books Were Opened”— Rev. 20:12 (775). 

What are the books to be read? We are not told their title, but 
I think we may make some conjecture. 

I. The first book will be the book of the law of God. Just as in 
our courts of justice the laws of the realm are always near at hand, 
that in any doubtful case they may be appealed to, so, I think, the 
first book will be the book of the revealed will of the holy and just 
God, a record of the laws and measures by which men will be tried. 

II. The next book will be the book of the Gospel. Side by side 
with the volume of the law will stand the volume of God’s love con- 
tained in the Gospel, the wondrous record of all that is done by God 
for man. 

III. The third book will be the book of the dealings of God’s Holy 
Spirit with the fallen family of man. Some of us may have already 
lost sight of the striving of the Holy Spirit with us; but God does not 
forget it: God does not lose sight of it. 


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347 


IV. The book of God’s providence will be opened. In it is kept, 
without any possibility of mistake, a record of all God’s dealings with 
us externally. God is ever seeking by His providential dealings to 
bring us to Him. 

V. The book of our life will be opened. Every one of us is writing 
a book; we are every one of us authors, although we may never have 
written a book, not even a line, in our lives. Though we may never 
have dreamt of printing a book, yet we are dictating to the recording 
angel the whole of our life from moment to moment, from hour to 
hour. 

VI. The book of life. Jesus Christ is the Author of it. From 
beginning to end it is His. From the first page to the end, it is life 
all through: life as it first entered the soul; life as it grew and was 
fed and nourished and sustained, and the glorious results of life, the 
glorious harvest reaped by the soul; life which triumphs over our dead 
selves, which brings the dry bones together out of the gloomy sepul- 
chre — the book of life, written by the Lord of life, Jesus Christ Him- 
self. — W. Hay Aitken. 


1 


XII. OTHER WORLDLINESS. 
CONSERVATION. AN EARNEST LIFE 


REFLECTIONS AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 

She Gave Herself (776). 

One of the missionaries at the Nashville Students’ Volunteer Con- 
vention related the following pathetic incident of devotion to the Lord: 

‘‘Over on the west coast of Africa somebody carried the Gospel 
to a young savage girl sixteen years of age, and she came into the 
house of God on Christmas day to bring her offering, for they have a 
very beautiful custom of giving their best gifts to Christ on Christmas. 
They are poor, with a poverty which you and I know nothing about. 
Most of them could not bring anything save a handful of vegetables, 
but this girl, just saved out of heathenism, brought a silver coin worth 
eighty-five cents, and handed that to the missionary as her gift to God. 
He was astonished at the magnitude of it that he thought that surely 
the girl must have stolen this money, and for a moment he was about 
to refuse to accept it, but thought he had better take it, to save 
confusion. 

“At the conclusion of the service, he called her aside, and asked 
her where she got that money, for it was really a fortune to one in her 
condition. She explained to him very simply, that in order to give 
to Christ an offering which satisfied her own heart, she had gone to 
a neighboring planter, and bound herself out to him as a slave for the 
rest of her life for this eighty-five cents, and had brought the whole 
financial equivalent of her life of pledged service, and laid it down 
in a single gift at the feet of her Lord.” — Pittsburg Christian Advocate. 

“Follow Me” (777). 

“Follow me” is the sound of a trumpet. It is an appeal to those 
who are capable of great actions. Who are brave enough, honest 
enough, earnest enough, to renounce everything, to pierce through 
everything, that they may win Christ. If they can find it in their hearts 
to count the cost and pay, they enter into the life which is life indeed. 
. . . But the price has to be paid by everyone. ... It will vary 
in different men, but it would be very extraordinary if it were not, in 
many, connected with money. There is nothing with which so many 
spiritual perils are associated. There is nothing to the advantages of 
which we are so keenly alive, to the risks of which we are naturally 
so blind. Does anyone realize the deceitfulness of the heart implied 
in a remark of St. Francis of Sales, that in all his experience as a 
confessor no one had ever confessed to him the sin of covetousness? — 
James Denney. 


350 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


The Temple of God (778). 

Slowly throughout all the universe that temple of God is being 
built. Wherever in any world a soul by free-willed obedience catches 
the fire of God’s likeness, it is set into the growing walls, a living stone. 
When, in your hard fight, in your tiresome drudgery, or in your ter- 
rible temptation, you catch the purpose of your being and give yourself 
to God and so give Him the chance to give Himself to you, your life, a 
living stone, is taken up and set into that growing wall. Wherever 
souls are being tried and ripened in whatever commonplace and homely 
ways, there God is hewing out the pillars for His temple. O, if the 
stone can only have some vision of the temple of which it is to be a 
part forever, what patience must fill it as it feels the blows of the 
hammer and knows that success for it is simply to let itself be wrought 
into what shape the Master wills! — Phillips Brooks. 

Dauntless Determination (779). 

When General Grant was informed that his illness was sure to 
terminate fatally, he was engaged upon his life’s memoirs. He had an 
intense desire to see it completed. His fame was secure, but he wanted 
to ensure a competence for his family. If the book were to be com- 
pleted by any other hand than his own, its market value would be 
greatly depreciated. This was the consideration that strengthened the 
sinking soldier, that gave him courage to contend with fate and despair, 
and, stricken as he was by the most terrible of maladies, to check the 
advance of Death himself, while he made his preparations under the 
very shadow of the wing and the glare of the scythe of the destroyer. 
The spectacle of the hero who had earned and worn the highest na- 
tional honors, working amid the miseries of a sick chamber to glean 
the gains that he knew he could never enjoy — the fainting warrior 
propped up on that mountain-top to stammer out utterances to sell for 
the benefit of his children — is a picture which can find few parallels 
in the whole of history. 

Seeing the True Riches (780). 

You will have very resolutely to look away from something else, 
if, amid all the dazzling gauds of earth, you are to see the far-off luster 
of that heavenly love. Just as timorous people in a thunder-storm 
will light a candle that they may not see the lightning, so many Chris- 
tians have their hearts filled with the twinkling light of some miserable 
tapers of earthly care and pursuits, which, though they be dim and 
smoky, are bright enough to make it hard to see the silent depths of 
Heaven, though it blaze with a myriad of stars. If you hold a six- 
pence close enough up to the pupil of your eye, it will keep you from 
seeing the sun. And if you hold the world close to mind and heart, 
as many of you do, you will only see, round the rim of it, the least 
tiny ring of the overlapping love of God. What the -world lets you see 
you will see, and the world will take care that it will let you see very 
little — not enough to do you any good, not enough to deliver you from 


OTHER WORLDLINESS 


351 


its chains. Wrench yourselves away, my brethren, from the absorbing 
contemplation of Birmingham jewelery and paste, and look at the true 
riches. — Alexander Maclaren, D. D. 

Service (781). 

A woman living a few years ago in a miserable little village planted 
in front of her house a flower garden. When her neighbors crowded 
round to admire it she persuaded them to go and do likewise. She 
gave them seeds, she helped them to dig and weed, she kept up the 
work until they achieved success and were able to send flowers to the 
county fair. The poor-spirited women in other villages became wise in 
seeds and bulbs instead of scandalous gossip. The men, for shame, 
cleaned and drained the streets. The little woman is dead and for- 
gotten, but her work will be a help to many generations. 

An Eton boy, Quinton Hogg, appalled by the misery of a mighty 
dreadful London, got a barrel and a board, a couple of candles and 
some old books, and started a school at night, under London Bridge. 
He had two wharf rats as first scholars. When he died hundreds of 
thousands of poor men put a black band on their arms. They had been 
trained in the many polytechnic schools which had grown out of the 
barrel and boards — not only in Great Britain but in her colonies as 
well. 

In short, we may be sure, when we waken each morning, that God 
has filled our hands with good seeds, which, if we plant them, will go 
on yielding fruit throughout the ages. 

Whoever you are — wise or foolish, rich or poor — God sent you into 
this world, as He has sent every other human being, to help the men 
and women in it, to make them better and happier. If you don’t do 
that, no matter what your powers may be, you are mere lumber, a 
worthless bit of the world’s furniture. A Stradivarius, if it hangs dusty 
and dumb upon the wall, is not of as much real value as a kitchen poker 
which is used. — Selected. 

The Secret of Victory (782). 

Sir Walter Scott tells us that the battle of Bannockburn was the 
greatest ever lost by England or won by Scotland in the many wars 
between England, France and the Scotch. It was on the eve of this 
battle that the good abbot passed between the lines of the Scotch 
soldiery barefooted, exhorting them to fight for their freedom. They 
dropped upon their knees as he passed by and audibly prayed for vic- 
tory. King Edward, the Second, who in person was commanding the 
English army, mistaking this act of devotion for one of supplication, 
called out to his men: “They kneel down — they ask forgiveness.” 
“Yes,” said a celebrated English baron, “but they ask it from God, not 
from us — these men will conquer or die upon the field,” and they did 
conquer. — Selected. 


The Rich Young Ruler (783). 

His soul was like a boat tied fast, but tied with a long rope. It 
was able to struggle up the channel, past headland and light and buoy 
that marked the way; but always something held it back from per- 


352 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


fectly laying itself at rest beside the golden shore. “What lack I yet?” 
And then said Jesus, “Go and sell all that thou hast, and thou shalt 
have treasure in heaven; and come and follow Me.” He did not say, 
“You do not deserve wealth.” He did not say, “It is wicked to be 
rich.” He only said, “You will be free if you are poor, and then I 
can lead you to the Father, in whom you shall find yourself.” He went 
back, past the buoys and headlands, down the bay to where the rope 
was tied, and cut the boat loose from its anchorage. — Phillips Brooks. 

Life Means Opportunity (784). 

It is always sad to see people throw away their opportunities. Op- 
portunities come to every person offering their blessings and hopes — 
opportunities of improvement, opportunities of making friends, oppor- 
tunities of doing good, opportunities of knowing God — and only too 
often they are allowed to pass to return no more. It is the tragedy 
of youth. 

An artist has tried to teach this in a picture. Time is there with 
his inverted hour-glass. A young man is lying at his ease on a luxuri- 
ous couch. Beside him is a table spread with delicacies. Passing by 
toward an open door are certain figures which represent opportunities; 
they come to invite the young man to activity, to manliness, to honor. 
First is a ragged sunbrowned form, carrying a flail. This is Labor. He 
has already passed unheeded. Next is a philosopher with an open 
book, inviting the young man to study. But this opportunity, too, is 
disregarded. The youth has no desire for Learning. Close behind the 
philosopher comes a woman with bowed head. She is carrying a child, 
and her dress is torn. She is a widow, and was begging alms, but her 
plea was in vain. Still another figure passes, endeavoring to woo him 
from his idle ease. It is a beautiful girl, who seeks, by love, to awaken 
in him noble purposes, to inspire him with an ambition worthy of his 
life. One by one these opportunities have passed, with their calls un- 
heeded. At last he is rousing to seize them; but it is too late. 

Bonds. (785) — Only the selfish and useless are ever free. Those 
who are worth anything in this world are bound by a hundred claims 
upon them. They must either stay caught in the meshes of love and 
duty, or wrench themselves free. — From The Inner Shrine. 

Life's Heroism (786). 

Living is usually harder than dying. It lasts longer, and it costs 
more. Yet merely to live on, day after day, and year after year, in the 
service of one’s fellows, is not nearly so spectacular a thing as to die 
suddenly for a fellow being; therefore the heroes whose heroism con- 
sists in living do not get so much notice as the heroes whose heroism 
consists in dying. The “Jim Bludso” type of man, whose big heart and 
grim determination to keep his steamer’s nose on the bank until all are 
saved are the cause of his death, is worshiped with an adulation en- 
tirely lacking for another whose grim determination to stand by his fel- 
lows lasts a lifetime instead of an hour, and who dies a common-place 
death in bed. Men do not always see things as God sees them. To 


OTHER WORLDLINESS 


353 


“lay down his life for his friend” may mean to die, but it oftener 
means to live; and “greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay 
down (in life, not merely in death) his life for his friends.” — Sunday 
School Times. 


Fidelity (787). 

We should be scrupulously zealous to fulfill our pledge to Christ 
in all particulars. Love should impel us to this. George Cary Eggleston 
has told of Mr. Chastian Cocke, a Virginia planter whose honorable 
dealings were known far and wide. “Never in all his life did he fail 
in an obligation or delay its fulfilment one hour beyond the appointed 
time, no matter how free he might be to delay, or how much trouble 
it might cost him to meet the obligation on time.” Once a note fell due 
during a severe winter storm. He was in frail health, so sent his 
nephew, in his stead, on a sixty-mile ride over bad roads. When the 
messenger returned, he said, “All my life I have made it a rule to 
pay every dollar I owed on the precise day it was due, no matter if 
it cost me two dollars for every one dollar owed. The result is that 
my name is good in every bank in Richmond for any sum I may happen 
to want. Let me commend the rule to you. No man need undertake 
an obligation unless he wishes to do so. But, having undertaken it, 
he is in honor bound to fulfill it, no matter what happens. I know you 
had to swim a swollen river twice today. If I had not had you as a 
substitute, I should have made the journey myself, swimming the river 
as a necessary part of the proceedings.” 

Consecration (788). 

A life fully consecrated to the service of Christ never counted for 
as much as today. The special call of the hour in which we live grows 
out of the very nature of things, out of life as we know it today with 
its manifold complexities, its multiplied opportunities, and hence its 
increased responsibilities for service in the kingdom of God. Today, as 
never before, 


“The common deeds of the common day 
Are ringing bells in the far-away.” 

Just as there are great crisis hours in the life of the individual and 
the nation, so there are crisis hours in the history of the Church. I 
am convinced that we are now facing a crisis hour, and it becomes us 
to take the situation seriously. We can think of great crisis hours 
through which the Church has already passed. It was a great hour 
when Luther and Zwingli led in that movement which resulted in the 
birth of the Protestant Reformation. — Selected. 

Is Your Armor On? (789L 

Every day we struggle with giants in the spiritual region; they 
are called principalities, and powers, and the rulers of the darkness of 
this world— invisible but mighty, nameless but strong because of fury. 
We can only overcome by the grace and power of the God of David. 


354 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


Wherefore, take unto you the whole armor of God, that having with- 
stood in the evil day you may stand firm and strong evermore. There 
is a provided panoply, every part of which has been prepared and ap- 
pointed by the Captain of heaven. In vain do we take swords of our 
own manufacture, and adopt plans of our own feeble and perverse in- 
genuity. Stand in the old paths; demand to know the old ways; reso- 
lutely refuse to adopt any answer to satanic assault that is not included 
in the replies of Jesus Christ Himself to the great foe;, and constantly 
pursuing this course, the course can have but one end — victory in the 
name of the Lord, and heaven for evermore. — Joseph Parker. 

Self-Sacrifice (790). 

It is said that when Dr. Temple was Bishop of London he sent a 
young man to a position involving much hardship. The young man’s 
friends tried to dissuade him from accepting it, and he went to the 
Bishop and told him that he believed he would not live two years if 
he accepted the appointment. Dr. Temple listened, and replied some- 
what in this way: “But you and I do not mind a little thing like that, 
do we?” — Miller. 


Devoted Lives (791). 

A young girl in New York worked for years without a vacation to 
support a dependent old mother. Another young girl left her splendid 
home in Philadelphia to be a missionary to the lepers and as I passed 
the island where she had labored, said the speaker, a short distance from 
Honolulu I was told to turn my glass in that direction, that I might 
catch a glimpse of the inhabitants. As I did so I seemed to catch also 
the fragrance of which Christ spoke in Korea. I met a missionary, 
the daughter of a Presbyterian minister in this country, and she had 
given up luxury, social position, everything to do her work there. Once 
again I caught the fragrance of which Christ spoke, for “Wherever the 
Gospel is preached, this shall be told as a memorial.” “It is not the 
big thing, not the conspicuous service, but the living at home as a true 
father and a true mother, surrounding the homes with an atmosphere 
of heaven, that, and being like Jesus, that counts.” Tears were in the 
eyes of hundreds in that great audience and many were heard to say, 
“Oh! what comfort that talk brought to me.” An old lady sitting near 
the front was heard to say, “I couldn’t give much money to foreign 
missions, but I gave a son and a daughter.” — Dr. Chapman. 

Surrendered Souls (792). 

When Henry Martyn reached the shores of India he made this entry 
in his journal: “I desire to burn out for my God.” “I refuse to be dis- 
appointed,” exclaimed Hannington, in the darkest hour; “I will only 
praise.” James Chalmers, of heroic mold, once said: “Recall the 
twenty-one years, give me back all its experience, give me its ship- 
wrecks, give me its standings in the face of death, give it me sur- 
rounded with savages with spears and clubs, give it me back again with 
spears flying about me, with the club knocking me to the ground— < 


OTHER WORLDLINESS 


355 


give it me back, and I will still be your missionary.” A short time 
after this was said, I read in an obscure corner of a daily newspaper 
words something like this: “A missionary eaten by cannibals”; and 
the death of this modern Paul was announced to the world. Are we 
still in the succession? 


Zeal (793). 

When the monks gathered round Wicliffs bed, which they hoped 
was his death-bed, and adjured him to recant, he replied, “I shall not 
die, but live and declare the works of the Friars.” And he seemed to 
gain new inspiration, his health greatly reviving; and his words were 
ultimately fulfilled to the very letter. 

“Not Worth While” (794). 

John Stuart Mill, with all his learning and success in life, suc- 
cumbed at last to what he called “the disastrous feeling of ‘not worth 
while.’ ” He found that he had no clue to the meaning of life. And 
he thought the game not worth the candle. Cardinal Newman poured 
out his heart in the “Apologia:” “To consider the world in its length 
and breadth, its various history, the many races of men, their stories, 
their fortunes, their mutual alienations, their conflicts, their aimless 
courses, their random achievements and acquirements, . . . the great- 
ness and littleness of man, his far-reaching aims, his short duration, 
the curtain hung over his futurity, the disappointments of life, the 
defeat of good, the success of evil, physical pain, mental anguish, the 
prevalence and intensity of sin, the prevailing idolatries, the dreary, 
hopeless irreligion; that condition of the whole race so fearfully yet 
so exactly described by the apostle, as ‘having no hope and without 
God in the world, ” — All this is a vision to dizzy and appall, and inflicts 
upon the mind the sense of a profound misery which is absolutely be- 
yond human solution. — Selected. 

The Currency of Heaven (795). 

When a traveler enters a foreign land, one of the first things he 
does is to get his money changed into the currency of that land. We 
can take none of earth’s coin to heaven with us, but we can change 
it here by distributing liberally, thus “laying up in store.” This is the 
exchange of currency Christ advised the young man of great posses- 
sions to make. No one of wealth is following Christ without this ex- 
change, neither has he any foundation for the treasures of heaven. 

All For Christ (796). 

In one of our homes a few days ago I was told the story of a 
young missionary coming home on furlough. He invited his sister one 
day to take a walk with him. They followed the road leading to the 
schoolhouse on the pike, whither he had so often gone as a lad. 
He said to her, “I am tempted to stay at home and not go back again to 
India.” “You had a call from God to go, did you not?” “Certainly I 
did,” was the reply. “Have you the same kind of a call to stay, flat- 


356 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


tering as the offers are to do so?” “I do not think so,” answered the 
young missionary, and the sister answered, “Much as we should love 
to have you with us, you would better follow the divine leading.” Later 
this same sister was called to the mission field. Her noble work for 
and with the women of India is well known. — Selected. 

Faithful Unto Death (797). 

When a member of the Chinese mission force in the Hawaiian 
Islands, I knew a Chinese preacher who had already proved in South 
China the heroic fiber of his character. While assisting in opening a 
new mission at Sam Kong, Mr. Wong and others were attacked by a 
mob. The soldiers sent to give protection arrested Mr. Wong, who 
was later beaten with bamboo sticks because he was a Christian. As 
soon as possible his release was secured, and his wounds tenderly cared 
for. All through his suffering he was as happy and cheerful as ever, 
and when he recovered, he asked permission to go back and preach 
to the people among whom he had been beaten. — S. S. Times. 

Unselfish Service (798). 

Contrasting Savonarola with Lorenzo de Medici, Mr. Howells says: 
“Now that both have been dust for four hundred years, why do we 
cling tenderly, devoutly, to the strange frenzied apostle of the Im- 
possible, and turn abhorring from that gay, accomplished, wise, and 
erudite statesman, who knew what men were so much better? There 
is nothing of Savonarola now but the memory of his purpose, nothing 
of Lorenzo but the memory of his: and now we see far more clearly than 
it that the frate had founded his free state upon the ruins of magnifico’s 
tyranny; that the one willed only good to others, and the other willed 
it only to himself.” 


Enduring to the End (799). 

In 1838, Father Sarrai, of the Soledad Mission in Mexico, refused 
to leave his work, though famine threatened and the people were too 
poor to help support him. He and his handful of Indians remained, 
though growing poorer and poorer every day. One Sunday morning, 
when saying mass at the crumbling altar, he fainted, fell forward, and 
died in their arms, of starvation. 

Faithfulness (800). 

When the battle of Coriole was being won through the stimulus 
given to the soldiers by the impassioned vigor of Caius Marcius, they 
mourned to see their leader covered with wounds and blood. They 
begged him to retire to the camp, but with characteristic bravery he 
exclaimed, “It is not for conquerors to be tired!” and joined them in 
prosecuting the victory to its brilliant end. “The crown of life” is 
promised to those who are “faithful unto death.” — Australian S. S. 
Teacher. 


>s-\ 


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357 


Living to do God's Will (801). 

God’s will may daily be done by those whose place Is obscure and 
whose gifts are humble. Angels in heaven live to do God’s will. To 
do it perfectly and constantly is their supreme endeavor, and their 
endeavor is not frustrated. Christ came to earth to do the Father’s 
will. At Jacob’s well he said to His disciples, “I have meat to eat that 
ye know not of”; and when they wondered what this saying might 
mean, He said unto them, “My meat is to do the will of Him that sent 
Me, and to finish His work.” The will of God is the harmony of the 
universe, the peace and joy of heaven. It is the perfect law of liberty 
of angels and of men. “Thy will be done” is the heart of all real 
prayer. The doing of God’s will is our supreme privilege. That we 
may do it even imperfectly is the badge of our vital relationship to 
our Saviour. To do it perfectly everywhere and always is the Christian 
aim. When with all his heart one consecrates himself to the doing of 
the will of God, he possesses the peace that is power. 

The Story of an Ear of Corn (802). 

In the church tower of a town in Germany, we are told, there hangs 
a bell, and on this bell there is the image of a six-eared stalk of corn 
with the date, October 15, 1729, engraved upon it. 

The first bell that was hung in this tower was so small that its 
tones could not be heard at the end of the village. A second bell was 
wanted, but the village was poor and there was not the needed money. 
Every one gave what he could, but the united offerings did not amount 
to enough. 

One Sunday, the schoolmaster noticed growing out of the church 
wall a green stalk of corn, the seed of which must have been dropped 
by a passing bird. 

The idea struck him that this stalk of corn could be made to pro- 
duce the second bell. He waited till the corn was ripe, and then plucked 
the six ears on it, and sowed them in his garden. 

The next year he gathered the little crop and sowed it again till he 
had not enough room in his garden for the crop, so he divided it among 
the farmers, who sowed the ears until the eighth year the crop was so 
large that when it was sold there was money enough to buy a beautiful 
bell with its story and birthday engraved upon it, and a cast of the 
stalk to which it owes its existence. 

We may not be able to speak great words, but we can speak kind 
and true words; we may not be able to do great deeds, but we can 
do helpful and loving deeds. And these, with the blessing of the power 
of God’s Spirit in our lives, will result in untold good and our reward 
will be sure. — Apples of Gold. 

Aggressive Piety (803). 

A French military critic at San Juan, during the Spanish-American 
War said the principal difference between an American soldier and a 


353 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


French soldier was the initiative. The American soldier without any 
instructions from his captain or commander would initiate a movement 
that would produce great results. 

This grows out of the fact that the American hoy is a boy that 
is accustomed to think for himself and to grapple with new problems. 
Outside of military circles there is a hint in the principle that is of 
value. A minister, a district superintendent, a bishop, a Sunday School 
superintendent must have the initiative or fail to accomplish great 
results — initiate an advance at every strategic point. Soldiers in win- 
ter quarters and encampments are restless and enfeebled; lead them 
out against the enemy and they become an all-conquering force. 

It was the “all-quiet-along-the-Potomac” spirit that was the grave 
of General George B. McClellan’s hopes and aspirations. It was the 
initiative spirit that made Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, and McPherson 
heroes on every field of battle. “All quiet along the Potomac” is not a 
good motto for a minister of Christ or a church official. Sin is en- 
trenched around us in many forms. Initiate a movement for its over- 
throw. The Church may be cold and putting forth feeble efforts for 
the redemption of the community. Plan a movement that will rally 
all the moral force of the community. Attack entrenched evil with the 
courage and daring of Stonewall Jackson and you will find that the 
stars in their courses will fight for you. — J. C. Gowan, in the California 
Independent. 


Enduring Fidelity (804). 

On the banks of the Kuruman, in the density of African heathenism, 
Robert and Mary Moffat toiled on for ten years without a single con- 
vert. Four hundred miles beyond the frontier of civilization, alone in 
the midst of savages, their faith never faltered. At a time when there 
was “no glimmer of the dawn” a letter was received from a friend 
in far-off England, asking if there was anything of use which could be 
sent. The significant answer of Mary Moffat was: “Send us a com- 
munion service; we shall want it some day.” It came three years later, 
the day before the first converts were baptized. That faith was “as- 
surance of things hoped.” — Josiah Strong, D. D. 

No Neutrality (805). 

If God be intensely and passionately earnest that the right should 
conquer and the wrong be slain, then to be neutral is to disgrace that 
image in which I, and all the human race, were made. The epicureans 
of the old world, as you know, pictured the gods as utterly indifferent. 
They thought that they feasted and loved and lived for ever in an 
unruffled and ungodly ease. No echo of human sorrow ever reached 
them. No cry of a breaking heart ever distressed them. The shouting 
of voices in the world’s dim struggle never flecked the sunshine of 
elysium. You cannot wonder that a neutral heaven like that fostered 
in the citizens of Rome a neutral character. As a man’s god is, so will 
a man become. Give him an indifferent heaven, and he becomes in- 


OTHER WORLDLINESS 


359 


different. Hence history, with that wisdom of selection which laughs at 
the definitions of philosophy, looks at the self-pleasing and indifferent 
man, and calls him to this day epicurean. — G. H. Morrison, D. D. 

The Prayer Life (806). 

John Fox said, “The time we spend with God in secret is the 
sweetest time, and the best improved. Therefore, if thou lovest thy 
life, be in love with prayer.” The devout Mr. Hervey resolved, on the 
bed of sickness, “If God shall spare my life, I will read less and pray 
more.” John Cooke, of Maidenhead, wrote: “The business, the pleasure, 
the honor, and advantage of prayer press on my spirit with increasing 
force every day.” A deceased pastor when drawing near his end, ex- 
claimed, “I wish I had prayed more.” — Spurgeon. 

Quenchless Zeal (807). 

Gazzoli, the Italian soldier, fighting under Garibaldi, was lamed in 
both legs, and henceforth could only render hospital service. When 
reports of defeats and victories came in, Gazzoli’s eyes would fill with 
tears, and then glisten triumphantly. “But I still can scrape lint for 
the doctor,” he would say. — The S. S. Chronicle. 

Lamps Out (808). 

Lamps, but no oil! There was preparation to meet the bridegroom, 
and confidence, but a vain confidence, in an insufficient preparation. 
When the bridegroom came/ the foolish virgins were left behind and 
the door was shut. We who call ourselves Christians have made our 
preparation and are waiting for Christ to come. We all have lamps, 
which represent what is external in our Christianity, whether it be 
rites, or creed, or works of charity, or morality, or zeal for our church. 
But have we oil, that true spiritual consecration of the soul which alone 
can fill outward acts with light and life? 

The lamps may be of various shapes and patterns, but the oTFmust 
be the same in all. Whether, in burning, it shines out as repentance or 
faith or good works or worship, its essence is love, pure unselfish love 
to God and man. Where this love is wanting, there is no true spiritual 
life and no sufficient preparation to meet our Lord when He comes. — 
George Washburn. 


An Earnest Life (809). 

After I had spoken last Sunday to Hon. J. J. Maclaren’s famous 
men’s class, numbering four hundred, at the Metropolitan Church in 
Toronto, Canada, my theme being “Sacrifice and Service,” Sir George 
Smith, of England, who sat by me cn the platform, handed me this 
epitaph from the bronze monument in St. Paul’s, London, to the memory 
of Major-General Charles George Gordon, commonly known as “Chinese” 
Gordon, because of the noble name he won as a Christian soldier in 
China: 


360 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL, ADDRESSES 


To the memory of General Gordon, 

Who, everywhere and at all times, 

Gave his strength to the weak, 

His sympathy to the suffering, 

His help to the oppressed, 

And his heart to God. 

This is an exquisite and pathetic tribute to the greatest and best 
soldier that England ever produced. He was treacherously slain at 
Khartoum, Africa, which he had held against a long siege, until he was 
the last white man in the doomed city. 

His last letter, written to his sister in England, said: “I am quite 
happy, thank God! And, like Samuel, ‘I have tried to do my duty.’” 
His last day’s diary ended with the words: “I have done the best for 
the honor of my country. Good-by.” The outburst of popular grief 
in England and in all her colonies, when the news of Gordon’s death 
became known, has not been paralleled in any land. In Westminster 
and St. Paul’s the royal family and the court held memorial services, 
and all over Great Britain monuments have arisen to this great soldier, 
whose greatness was because of his gentleness and loyalty at all times 
to Jesus Christ. Lord Tennyson expressed the sorrow of the nation’s 
heart in these beautiful words: 

Warrior of God, man’s friend, not here below, 

But somewhere dead far in the waste Soudan; 

Thou livest in all hearts, for all men know 
This earth hath borne no simpler, nobler man. 

— H. M. Hamill, D. D. 

A Swan Song (810). 

In a little fishing village of England a clergyman labored for more 
than twenty-five years. His labor was not in vain, for he wrought a 
marvelous change in the sailors and fishermen of the village. At length 
he found his health far from good, and on consulting an eminent physi- 
cian he was told that unless he cast anchor for a while his voyage of 
life would soon be over. In four years he was forced to stop and seek 
the milder climate of Italy. He never regained his strength, and re- 
turned to England for short visits only. 

Before leaving home, in September of 1847, Henry F. Lyte an- 
nounced that he intended to preach once more to his people. To the 
surprise and alarm of his family, he did preach, and in addition helped 
to administer the Lord’s Supper. That same evening he handed to a 
relative the words and music of his great hymn, “Abide with Me.” In 
a few hours he left his home for Southern France. 

The last verse of one of his poems reads thus: 

“O Thou whose touch can lend 

Life to the dead, Thy quickening grace supply, 

And grant me, swanlike, my last breath to spend 
In song that may not die.” 


OTHER WORLDLINESS 


361 


And, “swanlike” lie spent his last breath; for in less than two months 
after writing “Abide with Me,” the hymn that has been for many 
years a favorite one for funerals, the hymn writer died; and a marble 
cross in the English cemetery at Nice marks his last resting place. — 
Cora Lowe Watkins, in The Christian Advocate. 

The Path of Sacrifice (811). 

There is the path of sacrifice. They who tread that way receive no 
on' ward crown. Am I a sinner because I have brought home no fleshly 
reward? There is a path where the rewards are all unseen; and only 
the highest walk in it; its name is love. Those who travel by it get 
nothing in return; they bring back no sheaves. Is it because of their 
sin they bring back no sheaves? Nay, but because of their holiness — 
their love. Their joy is what they give, not what they get. They do 
not prey upon others; they are preyed upon. That is their glory, that 
is their recompense — to empty themselves, to lavish themselves, to be, 
not the vulture, but the voluntary victim of the vulture. Their heaven 
is the worldling’s hell — unselfishness.” 

O Thou who hast trod the path unknown to the vulture and the 
bird of prey, I bow this day to Thee! Thou, too, didst bring nothing 
home after the flesh. No visible crown rewarded Thee. No outward 
plaudits greeted Thee. No material kingdom owned Thy sway. Thine 
was the cross from dawn to dark, the dying from morn to even. Men 
said, “He must be a great sinner since He is so unprosperous; let Him 
come down from the cross and we will believe in Him.” They did not 
see Thy hidden joy, Thy real unprosperity. They did not see that the 
path of love is itself the path of self-surrender, that Thy cross made 
Thy crown. But I see it, and I come to Thee. The world will wonder; 
the vulture will marvel; the bird of prey will be astonished. They see 
only the outside, and therefore they see not: ng. But my heart knows 
its own joy, and it is Thy joy — love emptying, love surrendering, love 
gathering flowers from out the thorns with bleeding hand to strew an- 
other’s way. Thy path may be wet with tears, but they are the tears 
of the rainbow; show me Thy path, O Lord. — Matheson. 

Investing In Eternity (812). 

The true idea of a Christian life. It is a great venture, a stake upon 
the eternal future. The Christian’s reward is to be the product of an 
investment in the future. Each man must ask himself this question: 
Is my reward being had now? Is any left to be given by and by at 
the hands of Christ? 

But it does not necessarily follow that all good works done pub- 
licly forfeit God’s approval hereafter. We are to let our light shine, 
etc. Christ’s words come to this — a good intention to serve God is the 
very soul of a good action, whatever be its outward form. 

We should think of our work now as we shall think of it when 
dying. We should live for a reward which shall not then appear to be 
worthless. — Selected. 


362 


' THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


Heart Music (813). 

' A company of monks in the olden time lived together in a mon- 
astery, working, busily tilling the land and caring for the sick and poor, 
yet ever hallowing their work with prayer. Every evening they sang 
the beautiful hymn, “Magnificat,” at their vesper service; but as they 
grew old their voices became harsh and broken, and they almost lost 
all tune, but they still sang on. 

One evening a strange youth came in to see them. He was strong 
and beautiful; and when they began the “Magnificat” his lovely, clear 
voice soared upward, as if to sing at the very gate of heaven. The poor 
old monks listened, enraptured. 

That night an angel appeared to the eldest monk and asked: “Why 
did not the old hymn ascend to heaven at evensong as before?” The 
monk, astonished, replied: “O, blessed angel, surely it did ascend. 
Heard yor not in heaven those almost angelic strains from the voice 
of our gifted young brother? So sweetly he sang that our poor voices 
were hushed, lest we should mar the music.” But the angel answered: 
“Beautiful it may have been, but no note of it reached heaven. Into 
those gates only music of the heart can enter.” — The Christian Advocate. 

Living Heaven On Earth (814). 

O Christian men and women, do not deceive yourselves! Remem- 
ber that God sees through shams, remember that God does not care 
for anything except the heart. He will not in the least value you for 
your professions or for your observance: but, “as he who hath called 
you holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation.” If you want 
to make religion lovable, you must make it lovely; if you want men 
to accept your opinions, enable them, if you can, to respect your charac- 
ter; let men see in you a purer standard than their own, a loftier stature, 
a kindlier sympathy. The centuries do homage to real goodness: fairer 
than the morning or the evening star; it is the reflection of the life of 
Christ; it is as “a city set on a hill;” it is a pillar of fire moving over a 
wilderness of graves. — Canon Farrar. 

The Pure In Heart. (815) — “Blessed are the pure in heart.” I am 
glad that it does not read, “Blessed are the great in intellect,” or 
“Blessed are the rich in this world’s goods,” but “Blessed are the pure 
in heart.” This brings the vision of God within the reach of all; for if 
all may not be rich or great, all can be pure. — Rev. Robert Forbes, D. D. 

Livingstone's Devotion To His Work (816). 

When Stanley went out to Africa and found Livingstone, he tried 
in vain to persuade him to return to England, as he was so utterly worn 
and exhausted by his many trials. Stanley writes of him: “He has 
been baffled and worried, even almost to the grave, yet he will not de- 
sert the charge imposed upon him by his friend. Sir Roderick Murchison. 
To the stern dictates of duty, alone, has he sacrificed his home and ease, 
the pleasures, refinements, and luxuries of civilized life. His is the 
Spartan heroism, the inflexibility of the Roman, the enduring resolution 


OTHER WORLDLINESS 


363 


of the Anglo-Saxon — never to relinquish his work, though his heart 
yearns for home; never to surrender his obligations until he can write 
FINIS to his work.” 

Livingstone’s biographer continues: — In December, 1872, Livingstone 
wrote, “If the good Lord permits me to put a stop to the enormous evils 
of the inland slavetrade, I shall not grudge my hunger and toils. I 
shall bless His name with all my heart.” In the following March, he 
wrote, “Nothing earthly will make me give up my work in despair. I 
encourage myself in the Lord my God, and go forward.” 

The Worth Of It All (817). 

A missionary once went out to India. He left a comfortable home 
and wealthy friends. He had to work hard and endure many trials. 
Some of his friends at home thought that perhaps he was sorry for 
having gone and would be glad to come back. So they wrote to know 
how he felt about it. Here is an extract from a letter which he wrote 
in reply: 

“Our work is hard. It taxes both body and mind. What our reward 
will be hereafter, we know not. But one thing we do know. If we 
receive no other reward than what is given us here every day there is 
no other work on earth that pays so well. In all the pursuits of this world, 
even in my childhood hours, I never have found so much real pleasure 
as in preaching Christ, the Way, the Truth, and the Life, to these per- 
ishing heathen. It is a work that perfectly satisfies the cravings of my 
soul; and as I pursue it I can cheerfully sing: 

“ ‘Go, then, earthly fame and treasure. 

Come disaster, scorn, and pain; 

In Christ’s service pain is pleasure, 

With His favor loss is gain.’ ” 

— From Rev. Richard Newton’s “Best Things.” 

Living Epistles (818). 

One of the ablest and most useful Christians in a certain city, on 
being asked, “What was it that led you to become a Christian?” replied, 
“A lialfpound pressure on my coatbutton for five minutes.” By this 
he referred to the fact that after consulting his lawyer, who was a 
Christian man, upon some matter of business, the lawyer gently laid 
hold on his coat-button and kindly asked him about his soul, and per- 
suasively commended Christ to him. Can you not find opportunity to 
reason and persuade for some soul’s salvation? 


364 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


ILLUSTRATIVE POETRY. 


I know that my Redeemer lives; 
He that hath died hath con- 
quered death; 

And ever living He forgives, 

As when He prayed with dying 
breath. 

Thou bleeding Lamb! I trust in 
Thee; 

I know that Thou didst die for 
me. 

Full oft with all my guilt in view, 
I fear there is no hope for me; 

My sins that holy Sufferer slew; 
I pierced Him hanging on the 
tree. 

His look of love my faith revives. 
And tells me my Redeemer 
lives. 

Alas! since first I saw the Lord, 
Oft have I wandered from His 
side; 

Slighted how oft His gracious 
word; 

Nay more — His precious name 
denied. 

Yet those sweet accents, “Lov’st 
thou me?” 

Recall my roving heart to Thee. 


sorrow its dark shadow 
flings, 

When sinks my soul in deepest 
woe. 

This joy in tribulation spring, 

Hope in despair, I know — I 
know — 

And, Oh, what peace the know- 
ledge gives; 

I know that my Redeemer lives. 

Poor the world’s noblest diadem, 

Faint is each bauble’s bright- 
est ray; 

One pearl exceeds earth’s purest 
gem, 

One crown alone fades not away. 

That pearl, that crown, my faith 
receives; 

I know that my Redeemer lives. 

Yes! I shall see Him as He is. 

Shall know Him e’en as I am 
known; 

This weak, vile heart grow pure 
like His; 

His lovely image be my own. 

Take — take, faint heart! the hope 
He gives, 

And know that my Redeemer lives. 

— Unknown. 


I Know That My Redeemer Lives (819). 

When 


Ready (820). 

Beware, my soul, take thou good heed lest thou in slumber lie, 

And, like the five, remain without, and knock, and vainly cry; 

But watch and bear thy lamp undimmed, and Christ shall gird thee on 
His own bright wedding-robe of light, the glory of the Son. — G. Moultrie. 


God Gathers The Fragments (821). 

A broken song, it fell apart 
Just as it left the singer’s heart, 

A broken prayer hardly half said 
By a tired child at its trundle bed; 

A broken life hardly half told 

When it dropped the burden it scarce could hold; 

Of these songs and prayers and lives undone, 

God gathers the fragments, every one. 


— Selected. 


OTHER WORLDLINESS 


365 


Keep Right With God (822). 

When night comes, list thy deeds: make plain the way 
’Twixt heaven and thee; block it not with delays; 

But perfect all before thou sleep’st; then say 
There’s one sun more strung on my bead of days, 

What’s good score up for joy: the bad well scann’d, 

Wash off with tears, and get thy Master’s hand. 

— Selected. 


“Thou Art Near" (823). 

O Love Divine, that stooped to share 
Our deepest pang, our bitterest tear. 

On Thee we cast each earth-born care. 

We smile at pain while Thou art near. 

Though long the weary way we tread, 

And sorrow crown each lingering year 
No path we shun, no darkness dread, 

Our heart still whispering “Thou art near.” 

— O. W. Holmes. 

A Call (824). 

To the comforting, beautiful churchyard, to be with my dead and to pray, 
World-weary and lonely and longing, I slipped in the gloaming today. 
The face of sweet heaven bent o’er me, alight with the tenderest glow, 
And something — the smile of the angels — fell soft on the sleepers below. 

Their harps were enmeshed in the tree tops, light fingers were sweep- 
ing the strings, 

I drank in the music seraphic, and marked the soft flutter of wings. 
Those wings fanned invisible censers, so perfect the perfume they shed, 
It seemed like a mantle of sweetness, descending to cover the dead. 

I looked on the couches of velvet, embroidered with aster and rose. 
And garnished with handpainted lilies — God’s hand — where the sleepers 
repose; 

I thought on the things they had toiled for, had longed for and ventured 
to pray, 

And knew that up yonder in heaven they enjoyed the fruition today. 

I wept — for my own destitution — then lifted my face to the skies, 

The smile of the angels had faded, they looked down with pitying eyes. 
Soft, soft fell their tears in the twilight, I felt that for me they were shed. 
Compassionate tears for the living, but smiles for the fortunate dead. 

Then lo! from the east came a brilliance, a glory illumined the air, 
And I, in admiring wonder, forgot all my grief and despair. 

Hope flashed through my trembling heartstrings, a something spoke 
low to my soul, 

It fluttered its quivering white wings in yearnings that baffled control. 


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THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


And then to my spirit lethargic a wonderful miracle came, 

A hunger and thirst for achievement, for battle, in Victory’s name. 

A longing to till up the breaches, to man all the guns in the strife. 

To scatter the perfume of lilies like yon, in the pathway of life. 

To play upon harps that are human, with fingers so vibrant with love 
That, raptured, the listening angels would pause in the music above. 
I rose in the golden effulgence that flooded the world with its light, 
And knew that the God of the living had smiled on His servant tonight. 

— May Elliott Hutson, in the Christian Observer. 


Victory (825). 

It is not life’s tenure that I moan, 

Its many tears, its vanishing delights. 

Nor all the bitterness my heart hath known 
In the grim silences of wakeful nights. 

Nor doth my spirit in the battle quail, 

Dreaming of pleasure and inglorious ease; 

My arm would answer mighty flail with flail. 

And try results with mortal destinies. 

But this my prayer, and this my one request: 

That when my wrestle with the foe is done, 

It be not said of me, “He did his best” — 

Not that alone, but let them add, “He won.” 

— Herbert Muller Hopkins in the Outlook. 


“Not With Them When Jesus Came” (826). 

Not with them, Thomas, on that Easter night 
When Jesus came 

To bless His own, establishing by sight 
His wondrous claim? 

Nay, blame me not; I paid the price in ruth — 

A week of doubt; 

The ten rejoicing in the glorious truth. 

And I, left out. 

Not with them when He breathed the Holy Ghost? 

How could you miss, 

O Thomas, leader of a doubting host, 

That heavenly kiss? 


OTHER WORLDLINESS 


367 


Deride me not. For evermore I must 
This stigma bear — 

Among the blessed who not seeing trust — 
I was not there. 

Ah, Thomas, teach me by thy loss to be 
With those who pray 
In full expectancy their Lord to see 
On Easter day! 

By Ella Gilbert Ives 


His Vision (827). 

This man, this blinded man, could not see things 
A-near. He could not see the spoils of trade, 

Or rolls of bills, or stocks, or dividends 
That heap and heap. Nor could he see great piles 
Of stones or rows of brick or tons and tons 
Of steel or unmined wealth, or yet rich lands 
That stretch and stretch. 

O blinded, blinded man! 

But he could see afar. He could see the spoils 
Of grace. He could see the dazzling trail of glory, 

And he could see bright, glittering souls in earth’s 
Black night. He saw them; he gathered them 
And reached them back to God. Behold this man. 
Miser-like, bent to his task, hoarding wealth. 

Most precious wealth, in a place unknown by moth 
Or thief. Behold this man, this man who toiled 
As one would toil who could see beyond the mists; 

As one who could see the wondrous dawn, the morning 

The brighter day, the noon, the everlasting 

Zenith in far domains unlit by star 

Or moon or sun; as one would toil who could see 

The King in all His beauty; as one could see 

The Christ waiting to receive His own redeemed. 

O visioned, visioned man, 


368 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


TEXTS AND TREATMENT HINTS. 

“Present Your Bodies a Living Sacrifice.” — Rom. 12:1 (828). 

I. We have in the text a very remarkable way of putting what 1 
may call the sum of Christian service. The main leading idea is the 
gathering together of all Christian duty into the one mighty word — 
sacrifice. Sacrifice, to begin with, means giving up everything to God. 
And how do I give up to God? When in heart and will and thought 
I am conscious of His presence, and do all the actions of the inner man 
in dependence on, and in obedience to. Him. That is the true sacrifice 
when I think as in His sight, and will and love and act as in obedience 
to Him. To consecrate oneself is the way to secure a higher and 
nobler life than ever before. If you want to go all to rack and ruin, 
live according to your own fancy and taste. If you want to be strong, 
and grow stronger and more and more blessed, put the brake on, and 
keep a tight hand upon yourself, and offer your whole being upon 
His altar. 

II. 'We have here likewise the great motive of Christian service: 
“I beseech you, therefore, by the mercies of God.” In the Apostle’s mind 
this is no vague expression for the whole of the diffused blessings with 
which God floods the world, but he means thereby the definite specific 
thing, the great scheme of mercy, set forth in the previous chapters, 
that is to say, His great work in saving the world through Jesus 
Christ. That is ‘‘the mercies” with which he makes his appeal. The 
diffused and wide-shining mercies, which stream from the Father’s 
heart, are all, as it were, focussed as through a burning-glass into one 
strong beam, which can kindle the greenest wood and melt the thick- 
ribbed ice. Only on the footing of that sacrifice can we offer ours. 
He has offered the one sacrifice, of which His death is the essential 
part, in order that we may offer the sacrifice of which our life is the 
essential part. 

III. Note the gentle enforcement of this great motive for Christian 
service: “I beseech you.” Law commands, the gospel entreats. Paul’s 
beseeching is only a less tender echo of the Master’s entreaty. — Alexan- 
der Maclaren, D. D. 

“To Keep Himself Unspotted From the World.” — James 1:27 (829). 

St. James specifies a distinct form of evil, the world; not other 
forms of evil. 

Let me define what the world is. It is not this beautiful world, 
which weaves for God the living garment in which the Invisible has 
robed His mysterious loveliness. Drink in beauty and heaven as much 
as you will from that. Yet a narrow mind has sometimes been tor- 
mented with a scruple about the lawfulness of enjoying the world, even 
in this sense. 

Nor, again, does the world mean domestic affections. Let us guard 
against a common mistake. Men tell us when we love our children 
they will be taken from us. Awful picture of a tyrant God! When 
we weep, they bid us dry our tears; they forget that Jesus wept. We 


OTHER WORLDLINESS 


S69 


love little enough; let us bring in no cold, desolating, stoical theory 
to make that little less. Desecrate not the sacred home of love by 
the name of the forbidden world. 

The world that spots is the spirit of evil around us. Wherever men 
congregate for pleasure, business, or amusement, there is evil. It be- 
longs to the town rather than to the country; to large societies rather 
than to small. A mixed, strange, many-headed monster is it. It is 
like the miasma of a marsh. Each single pleasure is harmless in itself 
till the noxious juices are drawn out. It differs in different ages; 
persecuting and soft, money-making, infidel and superstitious — a tor- 
rent which we must stem. 

Observe, distinct effort is required in a man to “keep himself un- 
spotted from the world.” You are spottable; the world can spot you — 
“keep” yourself. 

Moreover, we may not decline the danger. We must go right 
through. Christians must be soldiers, tradesmen, citizens. There can 
be no luxurious shutting ourselves up with our devotional books. The 
snow-river flows through the lake without imbibing its warmth. We 
must transmute the evil. 

Out of the innumerable influences of that multiform evil we select 
only three. 

I. The world’s tainting influence upon delicacy of heart. 

This tendency is universal. There are manufactories where the 
evil and the well-disposed mix in dangerous proximity for hours to- 
gether; bold vice and modest virtue. Go higher still. Enter gay so- 
ciety; look at young persons at the end of two seasons. Observe the 
influence upon them of newspapers, novels, and conversation in pro- 
ducing familiarity with evil. They have tasted of the “tree of knowl- 
edge,” and have gained knowingness. Oh, the degradation and agony 
of a heart which feels itself naked! When the drapery is torn from 
life, we know what lies beneath. 

All this comes from the world; not from your own heart only, but 
from the miasma of many hearts. In a marsh each single plant is 
harmless; the festering, noxious juices come out of the many. The 
retired life is safe; in the crowd danger straightway rises. 

This is the natural tendency, unless it be counteracted by the 
effort here spoken of — “Keep yourself unspotted from the world.” 

II. The world’s power to make artificial. 

Define the world as the not-natural. Picture the man of the world 
seeming to be what he is not — a well-bred person with every emotion 
under control, with features immovable. We are as sure of meeting 
consideration from him as if he were influenced by the Gospel. Yet 
all this bland courtesy is on the outside; it is the smoothness of coin 
caused by friction in the purse. The edges, the corners, the salient 
points, all individuality rubbed away. This species of worldliness be- 
gins early. The boy at school dares not speak of his mother and sis- 
ters; at last he becomes brutalized enough to ridicule his home. It 
is an unnatural control, as well as an unnatural affectation of feeling. 


370 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


So in after-life. The world honors riches; we are feverishly afraid 
of being detected in poverty. If our fortune he diminished, we adopt 
meanness and artifices at home, that we may seem the same abroad. 

The world honors politeness; hence compliments and flattery. Oh, 
the crushing sense of degradation that comes from it! 

The world honors feeling; hence sentimentality. 

The world honors high birth; hence the attempt to seem familiar 
with good society. 

This is the world. Men and women who have not kept themselves 
unspotted from the world are not what they seem. Hollow and unreal, 
their affectation appears everywhere in accent, motion, and sentiment. 

And, do what we will, we imbibe this. Dikes intended to keep 
out salt water still admit some. The precept to be natural makes us 
unnatural; we affect nature. 

Now, there is no remedy for this hut what St. James gives. Firstly, 
some familiarity with suffering; and, secondly, intercourse with God. 
We must live “before God the Father”; live in the splendors of the 
next world till this world is dim. The man living in sunshine is not 
dazzled by the oil-lamp. One who hears in his inmost soul the har- 
monies of everlasting harps will not mistake the discord of this world 
for music. One looking out for death and judgment to come will not 
heed the judgments of this world. Feel the powers of the world to 
come; that is the secret of keeping one’s self unspotted from this world. 

III. The power of the world to destroy feeling. 

It is a common expression to speak of the heartlessness of the 
world. Let us trace the history of the decay of feeling. We passion- 
ately crave a more lively life. Life generally is a dull, vegetating 
existence. There are times when we get out of this; when the blood 
runs fast, and thoughts and imaginations crowd and hurry and pre- 
cipitate, as if we had gigantic energy. It is the delightfulness of 
animal exhilaration. There are the different excitements of conversa- 
tion, society, music, or of the stimulant of wine; all those things which 
the world offers; “all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and 
the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but 
is of the world.” There is the craving of the drunkard. Life would 
he robbed of its exhilaration, so he cannot give up drink. Now, this 
is the consequence: unsettlement and deadening of feelings. 

So in the body. In the tropics man is matured early and decays 
early. He is old at thirty; the sensations of life are all felt early. 

Similarly in the heart. Early maturity of feeling is premature 
decay of heart. Existence does not depend on time. One man at 
twenty-five has lived longer than another at fifty. 

Observe, all God’s pleasures are simple ones; health, the rapture 
of a May morning, sunshine, the stream blue and green, kind words, 
benevolent acts, the glow of good-humor. It is the time when you 
need nothing stronger than bread and water to be intoxicated with 
happiness. 


OTHER WORLDLINESS 


371 


But look at other excitements. The great calm presence and beauty 
of creation does not come forth to the sorceries of artificial excitement. 
Stimulate the jaded senses with town life, and then there is no radiant 
wisdom left in the simplicities of life. 

This is the lesson we press upon the young. Keep unspotted from 
the world. The keenness of wonder is by degrees lost early, and is 
followed by exhaustion of feeling; and men become blase of life. 

Oh that the young would learn from the experience of those who 
know it. Remember Solomon’s state. Is there anything whereof it 
may be said, “See, this is new?” Ye that live in pleasure, to this you 
are coming! 

There are peculiar features in the present time. The world is 
moving fast, and we with it. There are a multiplicity of pleasures; a 
cheapness in their purchase, and change in their variety. Thousands 
see foreign lands now. There are the excitements of railways, specula- 
tion, and literature. These produce exhaustion of feeling and of inter- 
est. Compare the patriarchal times, and we find the man of one hun- 
dred and fifty had not lived so much as the man of forty now. Let 
Christians, therefore, be on their guard. They have need of calmness. 
They have the power of the Gospel and duty to soothe them. Remem- 
ber the Cana feast. Would you have your best last? Avoid stimulus; 
live plainly. You will drink the rich body of heavenly wine, and feel 
the refreshment of its sacred joy. 

And now a word of application. 

St. James gives a distinct view of religion. It is practical charity 
and purity. God’s sovereignty and eternity are nothing without this. 
You are no favorite of Heaven to be exempt. 

And, observe, both charity and purity are joined together, not kept 
separate. There is a difficulty in their union; but observance of the 
one cannot excuse neglect of the other. 

The active must be worldly. 

The strict, pure, quiet, dreamy, must be active. 

External benevolence and inward purity go hand in hand. — Frederick 
W. Robertson, M. D. 

“There Is But a Step Between Me And Death.” — 1 Sam. 20:3 (830). 

It is true that just off there, two hours — ten steps — away, there is 
a spiritual world — into which at any moment we may be ushered; into 
which, before long, we shall, most certainly, all be ushered. A mul- 
titude on that ill-fated Atlantic liner, who at one o’clock in the morn- 
ing still believed that their tenure of earthlift would be of years dura- 
tion, at two o’clock — just about an hour later — crossed the boundary line 
between the seen and fleeting and the unseen and eternal, and they 
are living somewhere in that other world. 

I. What . fools we often are! 

To know, to believe, to be ready to cite a long list of proofs of 
the existence of that other world, and yet to live for hours, days, 
years, with hardly a thought of it. To plan, and think, and toil and 
strive as if it was all an empty myth, a poet’s idle dream. 


372 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


II. Could any experience have a more ennobling influence upon 
the life than the keen realization of the nearness of the unseen world! 

What a spur it proves to tireless zeal in the cause of Christ. What 
a blessed inspiration it provides when earth’s storms threaten to extin- 
guish the gleaming lights of hope and joy. 

What an antidote it offers for neutralizing the baneful power of 
the hurtful things of this life over the soul. 

Training ourselves to cherish this thought of its nearness does 
not shadow our lives, while it does rob death of its dread. 

“It seemeth such a little way to me. 

Across to that strange country, the Beyond; 

And yet not strange, for it has grown to be 
The home of those of whom I am so fond; 

They make it seem familiar and more dear. 

As journeying friends bring distant countries near.” 

III. It is our privilege and duty to cherish this alert awareness 
of the unseen world. 

And it is a privilege which we cannot afford to forego. How 
many sorrows it would turn into joys. If, when dear friends are taken 
from us, instead of having “holden eyes,” faith’s vision would but 
follow the soul’s flight into the realms of bliss, our gladness in their 
gain would almost extinguish our grief over our loss. 

And how much the ever-present thought of it would do not only 
thus to mitigate sorrow, but weaken the grip of sordid earthiness and 
reinforce the soul in its conflict with sin. — J. H. B. 


XIII. FRAGRANT LIVES— OUR INFLUENCE 


REFLECTIONS AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 

A Treasure Which Endures (831). 

Of all beautiful things a beautiful character is the most beautiful. 
That is not a thing that you can prove. It needs no proving. It is 
what we all acknowledge in our hearts. And if it is the most beautiful 
thing in the world, it is also the most useful. It is character that tells 
more than anything else in the long run, and that secures for man- 
kind the wealth that is most worth coveting. There is not very much, 
perhaps, that we can do for our fellow men in what we call practical 
ways, but we can help them enormously by being just good men. It 
is more useful to be a great saint than to be a great inventor. More- 
over, this is a treasure which endures. Many of the things that we 
build up with so much labor and care disappear and are forgotten like 
the towers we built with bricks when we were children, or the brave 
structures by the seashore that were swept away by the incoming tide. 
Our riches take wings and fly away, and we too fly away and are 
forgotten, and it seems as if all the toil of our life were for nothing. 
We go out of the world and carry nothing with us. But there is some- 
thing that we carry with us. We take ourselves. We do not lose the 
character that we have been building up with so much patience and 
self-denial. That is ours to keep and ours to keep forever. 

There is this to remember, too — that there is nothing that gives 
so much interest to the closing years of our life in this world, when 
much of our work has necessarily to be abandoned, as the belief that 
through those years of sadness, and weakness, and loneliness, it may 
be, God is still carrying on His own great purpose in us, and pre- 
paring us for the better things that await us beyond the grave. 

As to the means by which the work may be done, I think we 
know pretty well what are the “means of grace,” to use the old phrase. 
We know that we can do something, and we know what we can do 
if we are so inclined. We know that we can “pray in the Holy Ghost,” 
and that we can “keep ourselves in the love of God,” and that we 
can be “looking to the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ,” and so coming 
under the power of the endless life. We know that there is a certain 
attitude that we can assume, and certain habits that we can fall into, 
by the help of which we may ever be growing in all goodness and 
wisdom. There are many little things we could do if we would. We 
know how, in the ordinary business of life, we can get into the way 
of doing things. We do a thing once, and then we do it a second time, 
and a third time, and thus we get into the way of doing it. It becomes 
a habit and is done unconsciously and habit determines character. — 
The Home Messenger. 


374 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


Springtime Lives (832). 

Let the life be filled with the spirit of the springtime. Let the 
voice in its heart always keep saying to it, “You are to go on filling 
yourself with vitality and joy, day after day, month after month, and 
then cometh the end;” and then it is not a cessation of life, but fuller 
life which the heart expects. The end which comes to the promise of 
springtime shall be the luxuriance of summer! '—Phillips Brooks. 

Jenny Lind and the Lily (833). 

When that queen of singers, Jenny Lind, was once singing at Cin- 
cinnati, there was a poor woman dying of consumption in the great 
city, of course an utter stranger to the former. She had two little 
children, who had a strangely longing desire to hear the “Swedish 
nightingale.” Their mother’s poverty utterly prevented her granting 
their wish. But the little ones thought if they could “only see her,” 
it would be some consolation, and they resolved to carry her as a gift 
the greatest treasure they had — a beautiful lily they had reared. Their 
request to see her at the hotel was somewhat roughly refused; but 
still they urged their plea, until the childish voices attracted the atten- 
tion of Jenny Lind, who was in an adjoining room. Opening the door, 
she inquired their errand, and, learning of their wish to see and hear her, 
she placed in their hands a “family” ticket for four people, and accepted 
the lily with loving words of thanks. That evening the audience 
noticed that in lieu of the costly floral offerings sent her that day, the 
piano simply bore a pot containing a lily, and they saw also that as she 
left the platform she looked down on the front row, and threw a kiss to 
two happy children seated there. Little marvel is it that all of us 
who recall Jenny Lind and her marvelous singing love even better to 
remember her beautiful Christian life and the numberless merciful and 
loving deeds that so adorned it. — C. E. World. 

Heavenly Arithmetic (834). 

Heaven’s arithmetic has some principles that seem paradoxical. 
One of them is contained in Christ’s estimate of the widow’s pennies. 
How can a copper cent be worth more than a gold eagle? His rule 
for getting rich is equally strange; “Sell and give, and thou shalt have 
treasure.” Does it make the treasure less desirable that it is to be in 
heaven’s bank? His get-rich-quick plan may seem strange, but it is 
practical. Getting comes of giving. We get mercy by showing mercy; 
we get forgiveness by forgiving; we get honor by yielding the place 
of honor to others; we become princes by making ourselves servants; 
we become priests by making ourselves the friends and companions of 
sinners. — Christian Advocate. 

Shedding Blessing (835). 

Let the weakest, let the humblest, remember that in his daily 
course he can, if he will, shed around him almost a heaven. Kindly 
words, sympathizing attentions, watchfulness against wounding men’s 
sensitiveness— these cost very little, but they are priceless in their 


FRAGRANT LIVES— OUR INFLUENCE 


375 


value. Are they not almost the staple of our daily happiness? From 
hour to hour, from moment to moment we are supported, blest, by small 
kindnesses.” — F. W. Robertson. 

Mark Twain's Tender Tribute to His Daughter (836). 

We take from Harper’s Magazine the last thing that Mark Twain 
wrote — a touching and beautiful tribute to his daughter, Jean, who 
died just one year ago. It was written on the day of her death. 
He says: 

“Jean’s dog has been wandering about the grounds today, comrade- 
less and forlorn. I have seen him from the windows. She got him 
from Germany. He has tall ears, and looks exactly like a wolf. He 
was educated in Germany, and knows no language but the German. 
Jean gave him no orders save in that tongue. And so when the burglar 
alarm made a fierce clamor at midnight a fortnight ago, the butler, who 
is French and knows no German, tried in vain to interest the dog in 
the supposed burglar. Jean wrote me, to Bermuda, about the incident. 
It was the last letter I was ever to receive from her bright head and 
her competent hand. The dog will not be neglected. 

“There was never a kinder heart than Jean’s. From her childhood 
up she always spent the most of her allowance on charities of one 
kind and another. After she became secretary and had her income 
doubled she spent her money upon these things with a free hand. 
Mine, too, I am glad and grateful to say. 

“She was a loyal friend to all animals, and she loved them all — 
birds, beasts, and everything — even snakes — an inheritance from me. 
She knew all the birds; she was high up in that lore. She became a 
member of various humane societies when she was still a little girl — 
both here and abroad — and she remained an active member to the 
last. She founded two or three societies for the protection of animals, 
here and in Europe. 

“She was an embarrassing secretary, for she fished my corre- 
spondence out of the waste basket and answered the letters. She 
thought all letters deserved the courtesy of an answer. Her mother 
brought her up in that kindly error.” 

Hearts Like the Mown Grass (837). 

When the summer heat is severe nothing looks more woeful than 
the mown grass. Whether it is the hayfield which has been left mere 
stubble by the mowing machine, or the front yard that has been cut 
close by the lawn mower, it turns brown as the scorching rays of the 
sun beat down upon it fiercely all day and for many days. But when 
the rain comes the trees brighten up, the vines are refreshed, droop- 
ing flowers lift up their heads, but no one rejoices so much and no 
plant is so blessed as is the mown grass. That is why one passage in 
the psalms speaks of God, when he comes to bless his people, as rain 
upon the mown grass. 

It is a beautiful act when a boy or girl can quench thirst. For- 
tunate are those whose summer task is to sprinkle the lawn, the spray 
falling like rain upon the roots of the mown grass. I saw recently a 


376 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


man with such a spirit who built and filled with water a cement basin 
for the thirsty birds. Jesus Himself said that whoever gave a cup of 
cold water in the name of a disciple should not be without his reward. 

But there are hearts also that are like the mown grass. You can 
tell them sometimes by the sadness of their countenances. The next 
time you see a troubled face, plan at once to be like a fine summer 
shower. Whoever, by some smile and cheery word or by some help- 
ful deed, refreshes a weary heart and brightens a sad countenance is 
like rain upon the mown grass. — Rev. E. H. Byington in The Congre- 
gationalist. 


A Dream (838). 

A good Christian lady, we are told, once opened a home for crip- 
pled children. Among those who were received was a little boy three 
years old, who was a most frightful and disagreeable-looking child. The 
good lady did her best for him, but the child was so unpleasant in his 
ways that she could not bring herself to like him. 

One day she was sitting on the veranda steps with the child in 
her arms. The sun was shining warm; the scent of the flowers, the 
chirping of the birds, and the buzzing of the insects lulled her into 
drowsiness. So, in a half-waking, half-dreaming state, the lady dreamed 
of herself as having changed places with the child, only she was, if 
possible, more foul and more disagreeable than he was. Over her she 
saw the Lord Jesus bending, looking intently and lovingly into her 
face, and yet with a sort of rebuke in it, as if he meant to say: “If 
I can love you, who are so full of sin, surely you ought for My sake 
to love that suffering child.” 

Just then the lady awoke with a start and looked into the face 
of the little boy who lay on her lap. He had waked up, too, and she 
expected to hear him begin to cry; but he looked at her — poor little 
mite — very quietly and earnestly for a long time, and then she bent her 
face to his and kissed his forehead more tenderly than she had ever 
done before. 

With a startled look in his eyes and a flush on his cheeks, the 
little boy, instead of crying, gave her back a sweeter smile than she 
had ever seen on his face before. 

From that day forth a complete change came over the child. Young 
as he was, he had hitherto read the feeling of dislike and disgust in 
the faces of all who had approached him; but the touch of human 
love which now came into his life swept all the peevishness and ill 
nature away and woke him to a happier life. 

Do you know that there is no power in this world so strong as 
the power of love? As some one has truly said, “love is the greatest 
thing in the world.” — Evangelical Messenger. 

Just a Word Helps (839). 

A young girl was passing an aged aunt one day when she sud- 
denly stopped, laid her hand gently on the white head, and said: “How 
pretty your hair is, Aunt Mary!” 


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377 


The simple words brought a quick flush of pleasure to the wrinkled 
face, and there was a joyous quiver in the brief acknowledgement of 
the spontaneous little courtesy. 

A young man once said to his mother: “You ought to have seen 
Aunt Esther today when I remarked, ‘What a pretty dress you have 
on, and how nice you look in it!’ She almost cried, she was so pleased. 
I hadn’t thought before that such a little thing would please her so.” 

“I never expect to eat any cookies as good as those you used to 
make, mother,” said a bearded man one day, and he was shocked when 
he saw her evident delight in his words; for he remembered that he 
had not thought to speak before for years of any of the thousand com- 
forts and pleasures with which her skill and love had filled his boy- 
hood. — The Young Evangelist. 


Noble Ideals. 

Every man is subject to the overlordship of some ideal. It may 
be high. It may be low. It may be indifferent. But the ideal deter- 
mines the life. As a man ‘‘thinketh in his heart, so is he.” The ideal 
influencing heart, soul, imagination, thought, expresses itself in ac- 
tivity, character, life. The low ideal produces the base life, with all its 
attendant distresses, disappointments, and disasters. The high ideal 
produces the noble life, rich with graces, services, benedictions that 
bless mankind and bring contentment to the heart of the individual 
who is under its mystic and benignant sway. 

Clearly it is the duty of the individual to yield to the dominance 
of the highest ideal. Not only because from its influence emerges the 
largest measure of personal contentment, but, rather, because it enables 
him to live at the maximum of efficiency for the benefit of humanity. 
It does not need to be demonstrated in these days that ‘‘none of us 
liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself.” The influence of the 
ideal goes far beyond the individual in whose life it is manifested. 

The highest ideal is that which makes the highest and best life. 
And it must be, therefore, that this ideal has its source of inspiration 
in the best life. If it reaches the best it must come from the best. 
And it is so, for we find the highest ideal and the best life centering in 
Jesus Christ. President Hyde, in his book, The College Man and the 
College Woman, appeals to students in behalf of Jesus Christ in these 
words: “Start where you will in the moral world, if you follow prin- 
ciples to their conclusions they always lead you up to Christ. He 
touched life so deeply, so broadly, and so truly that all brave, generous 
living is summed up in Him. Starting with the code you have here 
worked out for yourselves, translating it into positive terms, and enlarging 
it to the dimensions of the world you are about to enter, your code 
becomes simply a fresh interpretation of the meaning of the Christian 
life. All that we have been saying has its counterpart in that great 
life of His. He gave His best; and how good and beneficent it was!”— 
The Ripening Years. 


£78 


^THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


The Mud-Covered Saint (840). 

Service is a great word. It cannot be overemphasized, for it is at 
the basis of tbe right kind of character. We are saved to serve. 

There is a legend in the Greek Church that well illustrates the 
greatness of service. It is Dean Farrar who draws attention to it in 
some of his writings. The legend is about two favored saints, St. Cas- 
sianus — the type of monastic asceticism, individual character, which 
"‘bids for cloistered cell its neighbor and its work farewell” — and St. 
Nicholas, the type of generous, active, unselfish, laborious Christianity. 

St. Cassianus enters heaven, and Christ says to him: “What hast 
thou seen on earth, Cassianus?” “I saw,” he answered, “a peasant 
floundering with his wagon in the marsh.” “Didst thou help him?” 
“No!” “Why not?” “I was coming before Thee,” said St. Cassianus, 
“and I was afraid of soiling my white robes.” 

Then St. Nicholas enters heaven, all covered with mud and mire. 
“Why so stained and soiled, St. Nicholas?” said the Lord. “I saw a 
peasant floundering in the marsh,” said St. Nicholas, “and I put my 
shoulder to the wheel and helped him out.” “Blessed art thou,” an- 
swered the Lord; “thou didst well; thou didst better than Cassianus.” 

And he blessed St. Nicholas with fourfold approval. 

It is only a legend, but it proclaims a mighty lesson. — The Epworth 
Herald. 

The Sympathy That Binds (841). 

A Christian lady was pleading with a poor, sinful girl, who had 
gone far away from her mother’s God, to come to Jesus for pardon 
and peace. Suddenly the girl turned upon her. 

“And you have been to Him?” she asked. 

“Yes, indeed, I have,” was the reply. 

“And has He given you rest?” 

“He has. O, thank God, He has. He is my Saviour and Friend.” 

“Then put your arms about me and try to take me with you to 
Him,” murmered the girl. “It would be easier to go with one who 
has been before.” 

It was the secret of success. Many will resent an attempt to 
draw them out of evil courses who will be won by that “touch of 
nature which makes the whole world kin.” Let it be rather, “Come 
thou with us and we will do thee good.” Another was rescued as she 
exclaimed, “I don’t care what becomes of me!” by a gentle touch on 
the arm and the loving words of a stranger, who overheard and under- 
stood, “But I do.” 

It will be well to remember that Christ Himself was “touched with 
a feeling of our infirmities” — the word used in the original meaning 
sympathy. — Christian Work. 

Sympathy (842). 

“Don’t give me any advice yet,” begged a brave, uncomplaining 
person to one who was trying to offer too many suggestions in a time 
of trouble. “Just sit there and let me tell you all about it, and I’ll 


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379 


have my courage back again soon. Just plain sympathy is all I can 
hear.” “Plain sympathy” is often the hardest thing to give, the com- 
fort that it takes years of experience to learn how to bestow. — Zion’s 
Herald. 


Life's Threads of Gold (843). 

Little self-denials, little honesties, little passing words of sym- 
pathy, little nameless acts of kindness, little silent victories over fa- 
vorite temptations — these are the silent threads of gold which, when 
woven together, gleam out so brightly in the pattern of life that God 
approves. — Dean Farrar. 


Our Epitaphs (844). 

We are all very busy — busy writing epitaphs. We do not let a 
day pass without doing something in this line, and we are all busy, not 
in writing epitaphs for others, but in writing our own. And we are mak- 
ing it very sure that people will read what we have written when we are 
gone. Shall we not be remembered? If not by many, we certainly shall 
by a few, and that remembrance we are making sure of by the tenor of 
our lives. Our characters are the inscriptions we are making on the 
hearts of those we know, and who will survive us. We do not leave this 
office to others. We are doing it ourselves. Others might falsify and 
deceive by what they might say of us. But we are telling the truth. 
The actions of our passing life are facts visible, plain, undeniable. We 
engrave them on the minds of all observers. How interesting the 
question. What kind of epitaphs are we writing? Will they be read 
with joy or sorrow? Remember the epitaphs we write are not for the 
marble that tells where we lie, but for the memory of everyone that 
knew us. — Great The 


Not Wanted In Heaven (845). 

When the plague came to London, King Charles fled to Hampton 
Court. He took with him all the ship money for his treasures. His 
people were dying like flies in the streets, and corpses were being burned 
on the street corners. But Charles left no copper penny, no silver 
shilling, no golden guinea for the relief fund. His people would not for- 
give him for his unspeakable cruelty. One day he returned to London 
with his outriders blowing their trumpets. Then the people refused him 
welcome. Every man went into his house and shut the door. A herald 
brought word to Charles that he was entering a dead city. Shame man- 
tled the monarch’s cheek. This would never do, so the king turned 
aside. That night like a whipped dog, the monarch crept into town, 
hidden in the darkness. And many a man at death will go home to God, 
and the judgment, with no one to come out to meet and greet him. Oh, 
it is a thought to blanch the cheek and turn it white as marble, that 
many a man who is pursuing his ease, who never did a brave deed in 
his life, who sacrificed nothing, will find that Livingstone and Luther 
and Lincoln will turn their backs on him, and that he is neither waited 
for in heaven, nor expected, nor desired! — Homiletic Review, 


380 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


The Tug That Stood By (846). 

Two vessels collided just outside the capes. One was a powerful 
liner on her way to port, the other a wooden freighter, hound Heaven 
knows where. 

The steel bow of the liner tore a great hole in the other’s side, 
and there was no chance of saving her. The commander of the liner, 
in immaculate uniform and brass buttons, very gallant and grave, gave 
orders that the crew of the miserable freighter should be transferred 
at once to his own vessel, to be taken to port in safety. 

Only the captain of the little tramp freighter remained with the 
doomed craft. That grim tradition of the sea which demands that the 
captain shall remain until the ship is about to go down held him there, 
stern-faced and immovable. 

“Lively now,” shouted the commander of the liner. “No use stay- 
ing there, man. It’s only a matter of an hour or two. Come aboard 
quick if you’re coming at all.” 

The captain of the freighter turned but a second toward the other. 
“Go to thunder!” he shouted back. 

The commander of the liner, grinning good-naturedly, told the ship- 
news reporters of the incident, when he reached the dock next day. 
“Had his nerve with him,” he said. “Knew he couldn’t save the boat, 
but he stayed any way. He’s the right sort. I’d be sorry if he lost 
out. But he’s safe, I guess. We had to get into port, but when we 
left him a tug stood by, ready to take him off before his boat went 
down.” 

In the great life-tragedy of the universal sea, while the night lasts, 
and later, when the first gray streaks of dawn appear, disclosing with 
terrible exactness the wreck that the night has wrought, I want to be 
the captain of the tug that stood by. 

Perhaps my vigil shall be wasted. Perhaps some great ocean liner, 
sweeping majestically after her mate to port, will stop her giant screw 
and take off the captain of the tramp freighter. 

Perhaps when he reaches the deck he will turn and wave me 
farewell. More likely he will swoon with weariness and relief, and 
will not even see the face of the man on the tug that stood by. It 
matters not. 

I do not want to be the commander of either of those great liners. 
Nor do I crave the pitiful glory of the man who was willing to go 
down with his ship. I want only to cast anchor again and disappear 
from the scene of the wreck, where no man knows and no man cares. 

For I shall know — and none else need know — that through the 
night, his back to the mast and his burning eyes turned to the stars, 
the derelict knew I was there. Consciously or subconsciously, he knew 
I was waiting in the darkness for his call. 

He did not call. He never learned my name. But when the sun- 
light of another day shall dispel the fearsome shadows of his night, he 
will remember. He will give thanks to the Master of the Waters for 
the tug that stood by. 


FRAGRANT LIVES— OUR INFLUENCE 


381 


Lights in the World (847). 

Faithful Christians, those who are the real children of God, are 
reminded by St. Paul, in his letter to the Philippians, that they “shine 
as lights in the world holding forth the word of life.” Not all lights 
are of the same magnitude, but the nature of light is always the same. 
There are places where the smallest light may be of essential service. 
Lighthouses are good illustrations of this fact. Of the lights on the 
coasts and rivers of the United States there are some fourteen hun- 
dred, but only forty-five are of the first order. Some of the smallest 
show the path of safety through very narrow, intricate and perilous 
channels. We can not be all lights of the first order like St. Paul 
and Martin Luther, or John Wesley, but we can all share to the measure 
of our ability in the sphere of influence which God gives us. By our 
fidelity, our purity, our love, our joy, our courage under the most try- 
ing circumstances, we can constantly hold forth the word of life. The 
light of life must be made manifest in homes and workshops, in stores, 
in factories and mines, on battlefields and in hospitals, and to the multi- 
tudes that throng the streets, or the world will be in darkness. The 
feeblest saint may cheer many and save at least a soul or two by 
letting his light shine. A candle in a cottage may be a more blessed 
luminary than a star in the sky. — Northwestern Christian Advocate. 

Made in One Image (848). 

I saw the other day a composite photograph of a group of physi- 
cians, eighteen in all, and all taken on the same plate and each one 
on the same spot. It was a beautiful face that was the resultant, 
full of refinement and sympathy. I have read that an artist-photogra- 
pher once tried that same thing with a lot of people picked up on the 
street, and the result was a composite whose likeness seemed very 
much like the face of the Christ. I can believe this latter story since 
seeing actually the reproduction mentioned in the first-named similar 
incident. There is more of good in humanity than evil. The human 
spirit: what is it after all but the divine spirit? Among all the races 
there is the mark of their creation after the pattern of the Divine 
Original. The future American will be the superman made up of the 
best of all the races. — R. DeW. Mallary, D. D., in Immigration. 

A Life of Service (849). 

The biographer of Alice Freeman Palmer says of her service for 
others: “There was in her a wastefulness like that of the blossoming 
tree. It sometimes disturbed me, and for it I occasionally took her 
to task. ‘Why will you,’ I said, ‘give all this time to speaking before 
uninstructed audiences, to discussions in endless committees with peo- 
ple too dull to know whether they are talking to the point, and to 
anxious interviews with tired and tiresome women? You would exhaust 
yourself less in writing books of lasting consequence. At present you 
are building no monument. When you are gone good people will ask 
who you w r ere, and nobody will be able to say.’ But I always received 
the same indifferent answer: ‘Well, why should they say? I am try- 


382 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


ing to make girls wiser and happier. Books don’t help much toward 
that. They are really dead things. Why should I make more of them? 
It is people that count. You want to put yourself into people. They 
touch other people, these others still, and so you go on working for- 
ever.’ ” — Ballard. 


Just a Bit of Kindness (850). 

Did you ever stop to think how beautiful kindness really is? In 
your walks nave you ever met a young woman gently supporting on 
her arm an old, old man? He is blind. Time has brought silver to 
his hair. His steps are slow and feeble. With a cane he picks his way 
on, all the way guided and directed by the one who is so good to 
him. At the crossing of a street she says, “Here is a step up. Careful 
now! Step up!” Or, “Now down! Carefully!” So on they go, chat- 
ting all the way, the old man seeing things on every side through the 
eyes of his companion. And how your heart was stirred by the sight. 

Or a young man is watching the steps of his wee brother. Boys 
do not always have the patience to do that. But see how carefully 
this one guards his brother from everything that would harm him! The 
world has no sweeter sight than real, true, manly kindness toward one 
who is weak and needs help on life’s way. 

On a stage coach one day a number of passengers rode many miles 
together. One man drew into his shell, settled down on the seat and 
never spoke a single word from one end of the journey to the other. 
Do you think that man looked beautiful to those who were his com- 
panions that day? 

A little bit of steel struck by a mallet will chip away the hardest 
granite. Unkindness is the keenest steel in all the world for the 
chiseling away of beauty in face, life, and character. No matter how 
lovely the face might be in the beginning, if the one who possesses it 
gives way often enough to harsh and unkind words, the beauty will 
surely fade out of her face. 

Do you want to be beautiful? Then be kind. Kindness costs some- 
thing; it would be worth nothing if it did not. — Selected. 

“Put Up Your Hand” (851). 

On the twenty-fifth floor of the new La Salle Hotel, of Chicago, three 
workmen were busy on the girders. A platform which supported them 
fell. One man went down to the basement. The second caught a rope 
and a beam and held himself suspended over space. The third man 
got astride a girder. He looked down to his comrade and yelled at 
him: “Put up your hand!” The second man did so, and was slowly 
but surely drawn into safety. The hand from above rescued him. 

None are so strong in this life that they can stand alone. One 
can often help, one often must be helped. It is the height of folly to 
be so arrogant in self-conceit as to imagine that never will the hour 
come when the help of another may be needed. 


FRAGRANT LIVES— OUR INFLUENCE 


383 


In the world’s history a street sweeper saved a king, a peasant 
changed the history of Europe through Wellington, a Sepoy gunner 
made India English, a farmer’s message led Washington over the 
Delaware, a newsboy’s quick wit saved a hundred lives in a great New 
York fire. 

Our individual work is different, but our interdependence on and 
with each other — to help and to be helped — is unchangeable. 

Sometime, somewhere, we are certain to be on the twenty-fifth 
story of a mighty temptation. That temptation has a basement at the 
bottom, but we cannot see it. But far above us a voice shouts: “Put 
up your hand!” It may be the voiee of conscience or the call of a 
helping fellow-being. 

Put up your hand and rejoice, as you are drawn into safety, that 
true men stand together in helping each other. None can stand alone 
and keep out of the basement. — Exchange. 

Gathering Life’s Roseleaves (852). 

In some parts of Italy, as soon as a peasant girl is married she 
makes a fine muslin bag. In this bag she gathers rose leaves; and 
year after year other rose leaves are added until, perhaps, she is an 
old woman. Then when she dies, that bag of rose leaves is the beauti- 
ful, fragrant pillow that her head lies on in the coffin. 

It is possible for us, year after year, to gather the rose leaves of 
tender ministries, unselfish sacrifices, brave actions, loving deeds for 
Christ’s sake. We cannot do this if we let the opportunities of our 
early years slip by. Little time will be left us, if we do, to find the pillow 
on which our dying head shall rest. We shall lose the desire to gather 
good deeds, and our hearts become selfish and unresponsive to our Lord. 

Let us be w’atchful to crowd into our lives the lovely, unselfish, 
and helpful things, that we may show our love to Christ. And then at 
the last, our heads shall rest on something more fragrant than rose 
leaves — the fragrant memories of good deeds, sweet to ourselves, sweet 
to others, and approved by our Lord. — Selected. 

Narrow Lives. (853) — It may be thou dost not love thy neighbor; 
it may be thou thinkest only how to get from him, how to gain by him. 
How lonely, then, must thou be! how shut up in thy poverty-stricken 
room, with the bare walls of thy selfishness and the hard couch of thy 
unsatisfaction ! — George MacDonald. 

The Old Clock On The Mantle (854). 

Not long ago we made the lucky purchase of a somewhat venerable 
clock which the dealer — an old German — had kept in his store for over 
sixty years. It was of the “Seth Thomas” make, and there is something 
about its whole appearance which does us good. It has the look of thor- 
ough sincerity to it. Its upright mahogany case is soiled and substan- 
tial — nothing fancy or gew-gawish — and the big dial-plate and plain, 
Quaker-like, uncompromising figures; the long pendulum swinging pa- 


384 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


tiently from side to side; the sober, work-a-day tick-tock, which keeps 
up so steadily and drowsily, and which seems to belong to an age less 
hurried and convulsive than ours; the striker hammering out the hours 
slowly, loudly, and unmusically, but quite unmistakably; the demure 
weights, descending little by little without flustration — all combining in 
giving us remarkably accurate time — make up a most restful and com- 
fortable article of furniture to look at. The old clock resembles, to our 
mind, some rugged, homespun farmer of a former day on the New 
England hills, or some “old salt” just landing from his fishing smack. 
As we open the door of this respectable timepiece, stamped all over 
with upright and downright honesty, we notice the brief, homely, but 
very satisfactory placard: “Warranted Good;” and it somehow braces 
us up and makes us have more confidence in our fellow men. No 
scamp work there, but just conscientious, honorable workmanship, with- 
out lying or fraud! Would that every article turned out from our 
Yankee manufactories might have borne, without misrepresentation, 
such a label! 

Now we don’t want to preach a sermon or draw a moral. Yet it 
won’t hurt us if we allow the old clock to preach to us — rebuking all 
shams and pretentiousness in us, and suggesting, as it looks at us with 
its open, trustful countenance, that if “warranted good” could be inscribed 
on our lives, without mental reservation or deceit, it would be a good 
certificate for the Day of Judgment. — W. C. Advocate. 

Singing From The Heart (855). 

A company of monks in the olden time lived together in a monastery, 
working, busily tilling the land and caring for the sick and poor, yet 
ever hallowing their work with prayer. Every evening they sang the 
beautiful hymn, “Magnificat,” at their vesper service, but as they grew 
old their voices became harsh and broken, and they almost lost all tune, 
but they still sang on. 

One evening a strange youth came in to see them; he was strong 
and beautiful, and when they began the “Magnificat” his lovely, clear 
voice soared upward, as if to sing at the very gate fo heaven. The 
poor old monks listened, enraptured. 

That night an angel appeared to the eldest monk, and asked, “Why 
did not the old hymn ascend to heaven at evensong as before?” and the 
monk, astonished, replied: “Oh, blessed angel, surely it did ascend! 
Heard you not in heaven those almost angelic strains from the voice 
of our gifted young brother? So sweetly he sang that our poor voices 
were hushed, lest we should mar the music.” But the angel answered: 
“Beautiful it may have been, but no note of it reached heaven. Into 
those gates only music of the heart can enter.” — Selected. 

Unseen Influences (856). 

The writer recently made a journey, carrying a pocket-compass; 
placing this on the window-sill on the right hand side of the car, he was 
able not only to note the changes in the direction taken by the train, 
but also the frequent interruption of unsuspected forces tending to 


FRAGRANT LIVES— OUR INFLUENCE 


385 


deflect the needle. When an extra track was passed, the needle turned 
uneasily; in passing a train, and more particularly a locomotive, it was 
disturbed; in going over an iron bridge it was violently agitated. At 
other points it wavered, possibly because of concealed magnetic currents 
in the soil; and in one spot it turned completely around and so persisted 
for some seconds, before righting itself. There are spiritual forces at 
work all the time, none the less real though hidden, which, on the one 
hand, account for much deflection of the soul from truth and right, and, 
on the other, make it necessary that the soul should be on its guard, 
since “Ten thousand foes arise and hosts of sin are pressing hard.” 
— Homiletic Review. 

Scatter Sunshine (857). 

Be generous with smiles and kindly words, if with nothing else. 
That which costs the least is often most valuable in this strange world. 
And kind words and gentle acts of sympathy have a way of reflecting 
that many and many a time has rewarded the giver a thousand-fold. 
It is a great thing to remember peacefully at eventide that some bur- 
dened heart has blessed you during the day for a timely word of cheer 
or glint of encouragement. — Christian Work. 

Marsh Lives (858). 

Much of human character is pictured in the marsh. It is a symbol 
of a really selfish life: the life that is forever receiving, but never 
giving; the life that is surfeited with wealth, prestige, and power, and 
yet spends it upon its own hurtful lusts; the life that knows no lack 
save the lack of sympathy and helpfulness and love. Indeed, the marsh 
is a likeness of much that is nominally Christian life. Too few church- 
es and too few individual Christian lives have sufficient religious out- 
let. The river of God is full of water, and all partake of an abundance 

of grace. The danger is in the choking of the outlets. When these are 

kept open by constant and helpful charities, life is both healthful and 
fruitful. No true life was ever hurt by its giving. Every blessing is to 
be handed on to others, and can hurt only when it ceases to flow. 

Christian selfishness is beyond cure. The grace of God can do noth- 
ing for it. That grace is always flowing like the river. Like the manna, 
it is new every morning. When a man hoards it, be that grace what 

it may, it breeds corruption and death. “I will bless thee and thou 

shalt be a blessing” is God’s dual promise, and one is not possible 

without the other. The marsh that only receives, though it constantly 

receives, does not contradict, but only illustrates the truth. Its blessing 
is a curse. The one thing it needs is a sufficient outlet. The lack of that 
means death to it. There is more hope for the desert than for the 
marsh. The irrigating streams that are sent into the desert make it a 
fruitful garden; it blossoms like the rose, and the barren places become 
glad because of the coming of the lifegiving streams. But the same 
waters make the marsh only the more of a marsh. The ancient prophet 
saw in his vision the desert of Judah transformed into a paradise by the 
river of life that flowed from the threshold of the temple, and the waters 


386 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


of the Dead Sea quickened into life by the same power of God; for every- 
thing shall live whither the river cometh,” save this only, “the miry places 
and the marshes thereof shall not be healed.” — Rev. J. B. Henry. 

What We Get Out Of Life (859). 

of us seem to suspect, but we come into touch with them only when we 

“Human kindness and sympathy are more common virtues than many 
have made our lives open to them, when we are looking for them. The 
matter does not stop here, however, for one of the most effective ways 
of cultivating these desirable traits in others, especially the young, is to 
act as if we expected to find them there,” writes one who is studying 
humanit:/ in a scientific search for facts. He has found the new, old 
truth that is repeated again and again in scripture, history, and ex- 
perience, and yet which each one of us must learn for himself or never 
know it at all. The world is a land of echoes, and the message we call 
to it comes back to us from every side. In very truth we get out of life 
what we put into it. — Selected. 

Her Gift Saved Livingstone (860). 

Rev. F. B. Meyer, in showing how life is linked with life in influence 
for good in work for the world, said: “When Livingstone went to Af- 
rica, there was a Scotch woman named Mrs. MacRobert, quite advanced 
in life, who had saved up thirty pounds, which she gave to the great 
missionary, saying: ‘WTien you go to Africa, I want you to spare your- 
self exposure and needless toil by hiring some competent body-servant 
who will go with you wherever you go, and share your sacrifices and 
exposures.’ With that money he hired his faithful servant known as 
Sebalwe. When the lion had thrown Livingstone down and crushed the 
bones of his left arm, and was about to destroy him, this man, seeing 
his critical condition, drew off the attention of the lion to himself, 
thinking that he would save his master at the cost of his own life. The 
lion sprang at him, but just at that moment the guns of other com- 
panions brought him down, and Livingstone’s life was prolonged for 
thirty years. Surely that noble Scotch woman, as well as the servant, 
should be credited with some, at least, of the results of the noble de- 
votion of that great missionary.” — Selected. 

The Help Of Love (861). 

Miss Fidelia Fiske, the missionary, was at one time almost utterly 
discouraged, nothing but defeat in her work seemed possible, and her 
burdens were almost heavier than could be borne. A native convert 
sat on the mat beside her, a poor, ignorant woman who could do nothing 
to help her, so she thought, but that woman straightened her back up 
against her and said, “Lean on me; lean on me; if you love me, lean 
hard.” “No one can know what that expression of love did for me,” 
said Miss Fiske; “it gave me strength, because love makes us strong.” 

It is the loneliness, the lack of comradeship with other Christians, 
that makes life so hard for missionaries in remote places. Said Mr. 
Waggoner, a missionary in Alaska: “I have been six years in Klanock, 


FRAGRANT LIVES— OUR INFLUENCE 


387 


and only one Christian white man has come into the place during that 
time — a sea captain who came in on a boat. Our little girl was taken 
from us three years ago. The only one who came in to have a word of 
prayer was my native interpreter; he prayed in his own language. The 
work is not hard, the climate is not hard, the lack of food is not hard; 
we have no time to think about these things. It is the isolation of the 
field that is the hardship.” 

“At one station which I visited last February,” said Mr. Waggoner, 
“one of the Alaskan natives who is trying to carry on the work, said, 
‘We have held all our meetings, but now I have preached all I know/ 
He can’t read, and for months he had preached the sermons he had 
learned from our missionaries, and he had preached himself out. Of 
course we gave him fresh instruction. We are all hungry for spiritual 
food, and how can a man renew his strength without food?” — Tarbell. 

Friends (862). 

It is not the seeing of one’s friends, the having them within reach, 
the hearing of and from them, which makes them ours. Many a one has 
all that, and yet has nothing. It is the believing in them, the depending 
on them, assured that they are true and good to the core, and therefore 
could not: but be good and true toward everybody else — ourselves in- 
cluded. Ay, whether we deserve it or not. It is not our deserts which 
are in question but their goodness, which once settled, the rest follows 
as a matter of course. They would be untrue to themselves if they 
were insincere or untrue to us. — Miss Mulock. 

For Those He Loved (863). 

Down out of the big woods near a Pennsylvania town a log train 
was trundling homeward. In the engine with the man at the throttle 
were a number of little folks enjoying the trip. How happy they were 
to be permitted to sit near the stout handed engineer! They laughed 
and joked, and had the happiest time of their lives until all at once 
Mr. Miller (that was the engineer’s name) made a discovery that 
caused his heart to almost stand still. The brakes would not work! 

They were now on a heavy grade. Knowing that the cars on be- 
hind would crowd him hard, the engineer pulled the air brake. Then 
it was that he found out that the brakes would not hold. 

Faster and faster the wheels rattled. Many who were riding in 
the cars jumped and saved their lives. The old engineer might have 
done the same. Did he do it? Bravely he stood at his post. “I will do 
all I can to save the children!” he said, and never flinched in the face 
of this terrible danger. 

On a sharp curve the engine left the rails and went plowing down 
the steep embankment. Over on its side the great locomotive toppled, 
carrying down the brave man of the throttle, never to rise again. He 
had given the best he had for tlioso he loved. He died at his post just, 
as surely as any soldier on the field of battle. 


388 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


Would you have been as true as that? You think you would. As 
you look at it now you feel sure that nothing could tempt you to leave 
the place of duty, be the peril what it might. And it may be that you 
would not. But the only way to be sure of that is to be faithful in every 
time of testing that may come. In most men’s lives there sooner or 
later comes a time of great trial. All along the way before that supreme 
testing time there are decisions to be made, and made very quickly. How 
will you do when those come to you? 

If you are true in the smaller things it may be taken for granted 
that when the time of greater stress comes, you will also meet the 
crisis like a man. Otherwise there is no certainty of it. For we are 
made ready for the hours of greatest stress by the little decisions we 
make along from day to day. 

Be faithful every time. That is what gives strength. The man 
who says, “I think I will skip duty this time,” weakens himself for 
the next time he is called on to face a hard thing. 

If you can say, “I will stand up like a true soldier every time I 
come to a hard thing,” then you may be safe in saying, “I would not 
show the white feather if my life were in the balance for what I be- 
lieved to be the right!” — Baltimore Methodist. 

Happiness. (864) — Phillips Brooks used to say: “If you are ac- 

quainted with happiness, introduce him to your neighbor.” 

The Immorality of Service for Christ (865). 

“Verily I say unto you, wheresoever this gospel shall be preached 
in the whole world, that also which this woman hath done shall be 
spoken of for a memorial of her.” — This is the gracious testimony of 
Jesus Christ to a kindly deed done by one of His humble ones to Himself. 
He glorifies it and makes it a gospel for the world. And this is the 
immortality of sincere godly service for the Master. Has our thought 
of merit in our doing perhaps led us to put too low an estimate on 
sincere service for Christ? Let us the rather be inspired by the thought 
that while we should not glory in our doing, Jesus does put immortal 
honor upon it. 

Seen at its true eminence, here is one of the most beautiful scenes 
in the life of our Lord. Beautiful is the deed itself and as beautiful 
is the spirit and purpose of her who did it. The act was alike strong 
and courageous. See what the woman had to face. The venture of an 
unbidden intrusion, the presence of men, disciples at that, with a limited 
sense of courtesy; not only this, but she goes right on under the fire of 
their reproach. In all that company she seems to have but one friend, 
but what a friend! Who can be alone, or really miss any one with Him? 
Then see what she gave. It was only a box of ointment, but it was very 
precious, usually the gift of the wealthy, and she probably a poor 
wonrrn. The occasion, the person, the spirit, the purpose, of the service, 
all these added to the preciousness of the offering. This bestowal of 
generous love was more fragrant than the costly nard itself. 


FRAGRANT LIVES— OUR INFLUENCE 


389 


We may detain the woman and gaze upon her amid all these unique 
surroundings; let the scene burn into the soul, “and point her out as one 
of the most touching spectacles in all the wide compass of history.” 
Her heart has been arranging for that splendid service perhaps for days, 
she has wondered how it should be accomplished and where, scarce 
dreaming maybe of the singular and fitting occasion that would offer 
itself. At last it is accomplished, and so done, with such choice of the 
subject, and with such unselfish devotion, that all the waste has been 
swept out of her past life, and she stands complete in Him who loved 
her and gave Himself for her. Such is grace, wondrous grace! It was 
on the Christ she bestowed her offering, “on the only Human Head that 
had not lost its crown.” — M. Rhodes, D. D. 

Do Not Wait (866). — Never, never wait for post-mortem praise. 
Speak the kind words w T hich love prompts, and remember that words of 
loving-kindness are the best possible tonic which can be given even to 
the happiest of mortals. — Kate Tannatt Woods. 

“Well Done” (867). 

Kind words count. Speak them often. Allow no one to speak dis- 
paragingly of the minister in your presence. Give the faithful man a 
lift with your kind tongue. Talk him up in the church, in the home, in 
society, in the street and everywhere. He will take courage, will preach 
better sermons, and will put increased enthusiasm into all his multiplied 
duties. He will win all along the line and you will have the joy of 
knowing that your bracing words proved a real tonic, and helped him 
to conquests he never would have achieved while struggling alone. Mr. 
Spurgeon once told of a faithful old servant who one day gave his master 
notice. “What, John, are you going to leave me?” said the master. “Yes, 
sir,” said John, “I am going to leave.” “But, John,” replied the master, 
“don’t I pay you enough wages?” “Yes, sir, the money you give me is 
all right.” “Then why leave me?” “Well,” answered John, “I have made 
up my mind to go.” “But, John, you have been all around the world 
with me.” “Yes, I have, sir, and you never once said, Well done, John.’ ” 
Ministers, as well as servants and wives, need the inspiration of a kind 
word, not flattery, but a word of honest appreciation. Flowers on the 
coffin lid cast no fragrance on the hard and stony road which has been 
traversed, and eulogy’s blandest note falls silent on the ear of the 
departed. A kind word will put fresh heart into the fainting warrior, 
and he wins triumphs which will fill all heaven with joy. — Selected. 

The Smoothers of the Way (868). 

“She always made things easier,” was the tribute given a little while 
ago to a quiet woman not much known outside the four walls of her 
household and in a charity or two, but who left an aching void behind 
her when she passed on into large life. No one who knew her could 
help recognizing the simple completeness of the statement. From her 
husband to her house maid, every one in the family felt his or her daily 
way smoothed and straightened by her tact and system and gentleness. 
She was a living example of George Eliot’s saying: “What do we live for 
if it is not to make life less difficult for one another?” 


390 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


To some girls and women perhaps this seems a small end to live 
for. Yet that it is so often approached makes the hope and the happi- 
ness of home. Life is increasingly difficult, increasingly complex in many 
communities today. The husband, the children, the friends of the woman 
who “makes things easier” more and more rise up and call her blessed. 
Her work is worth living for, because it continually makes every life 
within its influence seem better worth living. And when she is gone — 
how rugged the way, how heavy the burden without her gentle ministry! 
We hear a great deal nowadays about the “superfluous” woman. Some 
branches of woman’s work may be overcrowded; but never, never, 
surely, the high vocation of the smoother of the way. — Harper’s Bazar. 

“I’ll Stand the Pain” (369). 

Every one remembers the awful Park avenue collision in New York 
city. One of the sufferers was a young man named Peter Murphy. His 
feet and legs were caught beneath the engine which had telescoped the 
car. He had worked one leg free and was abcut to pull the other loose 
when the roof of the car fell on both legs. While he hung there in agony 
Battalion Chief Farrel of the fire department came along, and Murphy 
begged him to lift the timbers off his legs. “If I do that,” said Farrel, 
“the roof will fall on the other side. There are women there.” “I didn’t 
think of that,” said Murphy. “Let it stay. I’ll stand the pain.” Heard 
you ever anything more Christlike? So he waited a long, terrible half 
hour, till his fellow-sufferers were dragged from under the ruins. Him- 
self he could not save. No wonder that on March 9 following (this was 
in January) two thousand people escorted the crippled hero from Bellevue 
hospital to his home in New Rochelle. It was a tribute to something 
far finer than courage. — Pilgrim Teacher. 

The Spent Life (870). 

The life which gives multiplies itself. The life which absorbs destroys 
itself and others. All nature is built upon the plan of giving. The sun 
gives its light and its heat, the bird its song, the heliotrope its odor, 
The orchard yields its fruit for the good of man, the field its grain for the 
same purpose, and the mines give of their treasure. 

If man is not a giver he is out of harmony with his surroundings. 
If he makes a Dead Sea of himself, he becomes fatal to everything that 
seeks life from him. No one comes back from Palestine and tells of the 
fish he caught in the Dead Sea. No one speaks of the beneficent influ- 
ences coming from a Dead Sea life. It is all receiving, receiving. It gives 
out nothing, absolutely nothing, which it can retain. If perchance it 
makes a gift, it is poisonous. 

Jesus knew what He was talking about when He said: “Except a 
corn of wheat, fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, 
it bringeth forth much fruit.” He had reference to Himself, and to the 
result of His vicarious death. If a man does not give of himself, he also 
abides alone until he withers and blows away. That any man may live 
the second life, the sowing of that life is required. If any one has worthy 
traits of character, these should be inculcated into the lives of associates. 


FRAGRANT LIVES— OUR INFLUENCE 


391 


Indeed, no one can live worthily and not place his spirit into the lives of 
those with whom he comes in contact. In this lies the value of friend- 
ship. When a great man becomes the friend of another, that other par- 
takes of his greatness, and when the first man dies he is the disciple. 
This greatness is then passed on to another, and so on from generation 
to generation. 

Life is more than meat, and the body more than raiment. God never 
intended for any man to shut himself up in the circle of what he eats and 
wears. If one’s influence cannot penetrate these material things, the 
quicker he dies and makes room for something valuable, the greater the 
blessing to the world. — Selected. 

The Secret of Influence (871). 

Who shall tell us the secret of influence? Why does a leader lead? 
It is by the magnetism of a rich soul. And that is a secret, even to him- 
self. A clean heart is the greatest power in the world. Its force is felt, 
not only in humanity, but above and below it. Above, for it knows how 
to pray; below, for even the brute beasts know and yield to it. The 
legend of St. Francis, how he tamed the wolf that was devastating Umbria, 
has its root of truth. It is akin with what Emerson records of Thoreau: 
“Snakes coiled round his leg; the fishes swam into his hand, and he took 
them out of the water; he took the woodchuck out of its hole by the 
tail, and took the foxes under his protection from the hunters.” A man’s 
character, as he enters a room, without a word spoken, tells upon the 
whole social temperature. We raise it or lower it, diffuse winter chills 
or summer warmth by the currents that prevail in our soul. It is 
recorded of Sir John Lawrence that he seemed never entirely at ease 
unless his wife was in the room. That gracious presence, to which he 
had been so long accustomed, seemed necessary to his atmosphere. 
Deeper than all deeds, all words, are these emanations from the heart’s 
secret life. Herein lies the highest benediction of a sweet nature: that 
without conscious action, by simply being what it is, it acts as food and 
medicine to other souls. — W. J. Brierly. 

Lost Chances (872). 

Life is made up of golden chances — opportunities to do good. One 
lost is lost forever. If we miss doing a kindness to a playmate, we can 
never do that kindness again. If we might speak a pleasant word and 
we do not, we can never have just that word to speak again. Every 
opportunity that passes is past forever, and takes with it something that 
cannot be called back. Our character is either better or worse for every 
chance of good we take or neglect; and when we are grown, we will find 
that we cannot make ourselves over, try as we will. For this reason we 
should watch for and carefully utilize every opportunity to do good. — 
The Advocate. 

Our Japanese Girl (873). 

A young girl came to the missionary school in Tokyo, Japan, some 
years ago, for a few months. She was the daughter of a high official, 
one of the emperor’s counselors, and she did not come to the school 


392 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


because she wanted an education, but in order to be near one of the 
teachers, who had formerly been her governess, and whom she loved 
very dearly. She was not only far higher in social rank than the other 
students, but older, and did not care to live with the others in the school 
buildings. So she had a room in a cottage among the officers and teach- 
ers, end was very happy there. 

She was of a very kind and gentle nature, and soon teachers and 
pupils alike loved her. She, on her part, became deeply interested in 
Bible study. She was not allowed by her parents to stay very long at 
the school, and at the end of live months went home again. But before 
she vent, she asked permission to be allowed to profess her faith in 
Cnrist. 

She came to the school a heathen; she left it a Christian, and she 
took her Bible with her. At home in Tokyo she told all her friends what 
she had learned; and though she was a very quiet and gentle girl, she 
spoke so persuasively that several of them began to read the Bible at her 
request. 

Four of her friends became Christians in this way. Then the girl 
became the wife of the governor of one of the neighboring provinces. 
She left Tokyo, but she carried her Bible with her. Today, in her new 
home, she is not only still leading others quietly to Christ, but has a 
Christian service in her home every Sabbath afternoon, thus witnessing 
openly for the gospel before the entire province. 

This true story of what one young Japanese girl has done shows the 
value of an earnest, consecrated life. It shows the good that the mis- 
sionary schools are doing in foreign lands. And it also suggests the 
thought that there are many American girls, who could do much to help 
forward the progress of the Kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus 
Christ, if they would only live a Christian life and thus show to others 
the beauty of our Christian faith. — Apples of Gold. 

Our Talents (874). 

Your ability is the measure of your responsibility. To “whom much 
is given, much will be required.” I passed a home where a gentleman 
was sprinkling the lawn. His little girl, a child of about six years, was 
helping papa as her childish fancy prompted. She would bring her toy 
watering pot to the father, and he, reducing the force of the stream, 
would fill it from the hose. 

It mattered little to the grass and flowers whether the water which 
they needed was given through the large sprinkler or the child’s toy 
watering pot. So it matters little to the world whether you are a man 
of one, two, five or ten talents, so you give it the best you have. The 
one-talent man giving his best is better than the ten-talent man giving 
his worst. It is not how much you give to the world, but what you give 
to it. There are a great many more little things to be done than big 
ones, but the things that are done for Christ are immortal. — New York 
Observer, 


FRAGRANT LIVES— OUR INFLUENCE 


393 


The Path That Leads to Yesterday (875). 

I once saw a play advertised with the above title. If a man is grow- 
ing worse day by day, the path that leads to yesterday, if he could but 
travel it, would take him back to the purity of life that he once possessed; 
but, if he is becoming better continually, the path to yesterday would lead 
him back into the ways of sin. But yesterday’s path is trodden its last 
time. We may look back upon it with pride or with regret, still, the past 
is past. With regard to the opportunities of life, they are all “yester- 
days” after they have past, and there is no road leading back to them. 
— Selected. 

Truth in the Heart (876). 

I have been reading this last week the biography of George Fox, the 
founder of the Society of Friends. Time and again this old Quaker was 
imprisoned because of his refusal to take an oath. The oath was in 
Fox’s mind too sacred and solemn a thing for man to take upon his lips, 
but Cromwell’s soldiers, and the Royalists under Charles, found alike 
that the word of the Quaker was better than the solemn oaths of other 
men; that when Fox and his followers gave their word, they signed in 
their honor, their character, their very life, and this world might pass 
away, but their word never. This is what the word needs, the splendid 
might and power of truth in the heart which distinguished the Friends of 
old. — Wilton Merle Smith, D. D. 

A Beautiful Life (877). 

There is, I think, no one thing in the life of Frances Burney (after- 
ward Madame D’Arblay) more attractive than the beautiful attachment 
she formed for the aged Mrs. Delaney; a young lady of genius and fame, 
who would gladly at any time forego the brilliant assemblies of wit, 
learning and fashion where her praises were on every lip, that she might 
share the ripe wisdom, while she cheered the widowed loneliness, of her 
beloved friend of fourscore years. — Ballard. 

Thinking of Others (878). 

Dr. Guthrie used to tell an incident of a vessel that came upon a 
wreck. They went on board and found the emaciated form of a young 
man lying among a bundle of canvas. He was at the last extiemity, and 
they thought he was all that was left of the sinking wreck. They saw 
that the poor dying man was making an effort to speak; they listened 
and heard him say, “There’s another man on board.” It was all that he 
could say, but it was enough: he had done what he could to save his 
fellow creature. And that is what God expects of you and me. Will 
you do it? — Selected. 

Embodying Nobility (879). 

The thing that appeals to men and women is the living spectacle of 
one who has really achieved a notable thing and who walks before us 
himself the embodiment of his own achievement? You know perfectly 
well that when Lord Roberts, “Bobs,” comes back from India or from 
South Africa or from anywhere, and goes into certain circles, every 


394 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


young Englishman who sees him wants to be a soldier. You know 
perfectly well that when certain physicians, like William McClure, the 
“country doctor of the old school,” move in certain circles, every worthy 
youth in the community, interpreting the medical profession in the 
light of its highest example, wants to go into medicine. I cannot imagine 
myself how anybody who ever heard Phillips Brooks preach could keep 
out of the ministry. — Bishop Thoburn. 

The Signboard That Says “Be Kind” (880). 

“If I can’t make people feel better, I certainly am not going to make 
them feel worse,” remarked a lady, recently. I thought: “What a fine 
motto to live by!” I know a young woman who is a positive terror to 
her best friends because of her sharp tongue. She believes in “speaking 
her mind.” She says caustic things about her best friends, and then 
wonders why she has not more friends. She complains that she is not 
popular, but does not realize that she alone is the cause of her lack of 
popularity. She “drives tacks,” so to speak, into everybody she meets, 
her sharp tongue being the hammer. — Selected. 

Radiating Blessing (881). 

A tourist spending his vacation among the rocks and wooded ravines 
of Muskoka in his ramblings one day came across a small stream of 
pure spring water. Heated by his walk, he improvised a drinking cup out 
of the crown of his panama hat and took a long satisfying draught of the 
sparkling water. Then he followed the winding stream up the valley 
until he came to its source. Hidden deep in the recesses of the forest, 
the water bubbled up from its mossy bed and sparkled like purest 
diamonds in the sunlight. He covered the spot with his hand, so small 
was the spring; but he could not stop the flow. The water oozed through 
his fingers and made its way down the valley, singing gayly as it went on 
its journey of mercy to carry blessing to bird and beast and leave every- 
thing green and beautiful behind it. The life that is clean and pure 
cannot but be full of blessing to others. Unconsciously it pours its bless- 
ings forth and, like the mountain spring, nothing can stop its flow. — 
Onward. 


The Quiet Worker (882). 

No public note is sounded over much of the best work that is done 
in the world. Many of the most valuable workers and thinkers have no 
advertisement in the public press. The spectacular or the dramatic 
element is lacking, and there is nothing in the good deed done to appeal 
to the curious eye or the itching ear of the present time. There is no 
public recognition of their value to society. Urged on simply by a con- 
scientious desire to discharge their obligation to the generation in which 
they live, they toil contentedly on with intrepid faith. Not stimulated 
simply by the hope of reward here or the praise of men, they plod per- 
sistently forward, believing that the inscrutable future holds for them 
compensation which will be eminently satisfactory. It is satisfactory 
now, for they are men of faith, subsisting on the things hoped for and 


FRAGRANT LIVES— OUR INFLUENCE 


395 


encouraged by the sight of things unseen. Of such the world is not 
worthy. Their conversation is in heaven. They are citizens in the com- 
monwealth of the ages. They live not for a day. They can afford to 
abide their time for recognition. Ages upon ages after they shall have 
been known for their true worth to the world they will be enjoying the 
fruits of their unselfish labors. They are builders for eternity, and 
eternity alone can disclose the fine finish of their workmanship. Unknown 
to the columns of the public press, and uninfluenced largely by the com- 
pliments or criticisms of their contemporaries, they are content to be 
known on high and to live in expectation of the highest approval that 
the universe holds: “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.” — 
Selected. 


Investing Our Lives (883) 

The following touching incident is related by a pastor, who, on visit- 
ing a family from a former parish, missed from it an afflicted son, a 
young man of twenty-five years, who never had walked. This young 
man’s body was developed properly, but his limb3 were shriveled and 
undeveloped. All these years his father had given him the greatest care 
and attention. Each day he carried him from from his room to the table 
and back again. On the occasion of this visit the minister did not see 
the helpless young man and inquired after his health. The father replied, 
“Did you not know that he had passed away?” Assuring the father that 
he did not, he expressed himself by saying, “It is well that it should be 
so.” The father’s reply w r as most touching and pathetic. “What you 
say may be very true, but I have put so much of my life into his that I 
cannot tell you how much I loved him and now miss him.” — Selected. 

The Heroic (884). 

Sweet temper, the influence of right thought, the drawing power of 
a great religious wave, the reclining in self-satisfaction — call you that war- 
fare? The religion of our day has come to be too largely a religion 
with the comfortable as its essence. This is really the only kind that 
about two out of three have to show to their fellow men. It is not the 
existence of doubt and criticism that keeps our young men out of the 
ministry so much as the lack of appeal to the heroic. 

^Wrestling, fighting, running a race, these are figures the Scriptures 
employ to represent the attitude of the church. These illustrations 
illustrate. Everybody can understand them. The world as well as the 
church see clearly their meaning. Is the church wrestling? No! WTiere 
are its struggles for the faith once delivered to the saints? The heroic 
in its life can scarcely be found. It is conducting no deal in earnest cam- 
paigns against oppositions of science falsely so-called, against antago- 
nisms of skepticism, and oppositions of the world, the flesh and the devil. 
It is laughable and preposterous — a most ludicrous use of words — to talk 
of our services so formal, at times merely sentimental, at others as cold 
as they are beautiful, when even these, such as they are, engage us only 
if the sky is sunny and everything is fair, and we are not too sorely 
tempted to go visiting or on an automobile ride. Are we fighters, wrest- 
lers, runners on the course, all intent upon the goal? — Selected. 


396 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


Investments of Thoughtfulness (885). 

My own money investments have generally brought me little but 
trouble and worry. But the investments of thoughtfulness which I 
happen to have made are increasing joys to me. Just try it. Think up 
some jolly word which you will say to the blind man you pass on the 
way to the office. Write a tender, strong little note to the mother who 
has lost her baby. Remember to congratulate Tom Brownson on his 
promotion. Give your sister Lucy a lift with that abominable third con- 
jugation. Kiss grandma as you pass her, and whisper to her that she is 
the light of your home. Thank the minister for the comforting sermon 
he preached last Sunday, and borrow it for the benefit of bedridden Mr. 
Folsom. Put a blossoming geranium on a plate and set it in the middle 
of the dining-table. Oh, these investments of thoughtfulness are endless, 
and when you once begin with them there is absolutely no stopping. — The 
C. E. World. 

Secret of Inner Life (886). 

Doing nothing for others is the undoing of ourselves. We must be 
purposely kind and generous, or we miss the best part of existence. The 
heart which goes out of itself gets large and full. This is the great secret 
of the inner life. We do ourselves the most good doing something for 
others. — Horace Mann. 


To Save Your Life (887). 

The rule of the world is to “Look out for number one.” Nothing 
could be more antagonistic than this to the teachings of Christ. His 
greatest dctrine, the underlying principles of all his works and deeds, 
was that of self-sacrifice, looking out for number two. Therefore he 
has given the plain message that to save our lives we must sacrifice them. 
— Selected. 


The Work of the World (888). 

To every man is given his particular work in life to do. Nobody has 
any right to stand idle in the market-place. As a matter of fact, there 
are many idlers, while a minority toils overtime to make up for their 
laziness. Someone has thus stated the case metrically: 

The work of the world is done by few; 

God asks that a part be done by you. 

— Selected. 


A Prayer (889). 

Thou Lord and Giver of the earthly and the eternal life, we thank 
Thee that both are one for us in faith, as both shall be one in the experi- 
ence of Thy children. Thou hast enriched our lives with friendship and 
with household ties. We bless Thee for all true-hearted fellowship of 
faith and love. Still are they ours whom Thou hast taken from us for 
still they live to Thee although we see them not. We thank Thee for 
their ministries of faithful affection and self-sacrifice. Make us, like 
them, a blessing to the world. And may their memory bring us strength 


FRAGRANT LIVES— OUR INFLUENCE 


297 

to lead the joyful life of faith. Grant to us also help to overcome and 
bring us in Thine own good time into the dear companionship of love and 
joy where they have gone before. In the name of Christ. Amen. — The 
Congregationalism 


, A Dream (890). 

A good Christian lady, we are told, once opened a home for crip- 
pled children. Among those who were received was a little boy three 
years old, who was a most frightful and disagreeable looking child. 

The good lady did her best for him, hut the child was so unpleasant 
in his ways that she could not bring herself to like him. 

One day she was sitting on the veranda steps with the child in her 
arms. The sun was shining warm; the scent of the flowers, the chirping 
of the birds and the buzzing of the insects lulled her into drowsiness. 

So in a half-waking, half-dreaming state, the lady dreamed of herself 
as having changed places with the child, only she was, if possible, more 
foul and more disagreeable than he was. Over her she saw the Lord 
Jesus bending, looking intently and lovingly into her face, and yet with 
a sort of rebuke in it, as if He meant to say, “If I can love you, who are so 
full of sin, surely you ought, for My sake, to love that suffering child.” 

Just then the lady awoke with a start and looked in the face of the 
little boy who lay on her lap. He had waked up, too, and she expected 
to hear him begin to cry; but he looked at her — poor little mite — very 
quietly and earnestly for a long time, and then she bent her face to his, 
and kissed his forehead more tenderly than she had ever done before. 

With a startled look in his eyes and a flush on his cheeks, the little 
boy, instead of crying, gave her back a sweeter smile than she had ever 
seen before. 

From that day forth a perfect change came over the child. Young 
as he was, he had hitherto read the feeling of dislike and disgust in the 
faces of all who had approached him, but the touch of human love which 
now came into his life swept all the peevishness and ill-nature away, and 
woke him up to a happier life. 

Do you know that there is no power in this world so strong as the 
power of love? As some one has truly said, love is the greatest thing in 
the world. — Apples of Gold. 


A Girl's Song (891). 

At the time of the terrible accident a year or two ago at the coal 
mines near Scranton, Pa., several men were buried for three days, and 
all efforts to rescue them proved unsuccessful. 

The majority of the miners were Germans. They were in a state 
of intense excitement, caused by sympathy for the wives and children 
of the buried men and despair at their own balked efforts. 

A great mob of ignorant men and women assembled at the mouth 
of the mine on the evening of the third day in a condition of high 
nervous tension which fitted them for any mad act. A sullen murmur 
arose that it was folly to dig farther — that the men were dead. And 
this was followed by cries of rage at the rich mine owners. 


398 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


A hasty word or gesture might have produced an outbreak of fury. 
Standing near me was a little German girl, perhaps eleven years old. 
Her pale face and frightened glances from side to side showed that she 
fully understood the danger of the moment. Suddenly, with a great 
effort, she began to sing in a horse whisper which could not be heard. 
Then she gained courage, and her sweet, childish voice rang out in 
Luther’s grand old hymn, familiar to every German from his cradle, “A 
Mighty Fortress is Our God.” 

There was silence like death. Then one voice joined the girl’s and 
presently another and another until from the whole great multitude rose 
the solemn cry: 


With force of arms we nothing can. 

Full soon are we o’erridden, 

But for us fights the godly Man, 

Whom God Himself hath bidden. 

Ask ye His Name? 

Christ Jesus is His name. 

A great quiet seemed to fall upon their hearts. They resumed their 
work with fresh zeal, and before morning the joyful cry came up from 
the pit that the men were found — alive. Never was a word more in season 
than that child’s hymn. In this same way many a noble life sings a 
song of cheer and inspiration which holds others steadfast to hard duty 
and arms them against temptation. — Selected. 

The Inspiration of Noble Lives (892). 

We cannot add to our knowledge an acquaintance with the life and 
character of any man or woman who has done well upon the earth, seek- 
ing for truth and doing righteousness, without adding something to our 
force of righteous will, something to our ability to resist the solicitations 
of our low ambitions and impure desires — Selected. 


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399 


ILLUSTRATIVE POETRY. 

To Give Is To Live (893). 

“For whosoever will save his life shall lose it, and whosoever shall 
lose his life for my sake shall find it.” 

“Forever the sun is pouring its gold 
On a hundred worlds that beg and borrow; 

His warmth he squanders on summits cold, 

His wealth on homes of want and sorrow; 

To withhold his largeness of precious light 
Is to bury himself in eternal night. 

To give 
Is to live. 

“The flower blooms not for itself at all. 

Its joy is the joy that diffuses; 

Of beauty and balm it is prodigal. 

And it lives in the life it loses. 

No choice for the rose but glory or doom. 

To exhale or smother, to wither or bloom. 

To deny 
Is to die.” 

— Selected. 

/ 

How Long? (894). 

“Go break to the needy sweet charity’s bread. 

For giving is living,” the angel said. 

“And I must be giving again and again?” 

My peevish and pitiless answer ran. 

“Oh, no!” said the angel, piercing me through, 

“Just give till the Master stops giving to you.” 

— Selected. 


Making The Most of Life (895). 

We live not in our moments or our years: 

The present we fling from us like the rind 
Of some sweet future, which we after find 
Bitter to taste, or bind that in with fears. 

And water it beforehand with our tears — 

Vain tears for that which never may arrive: 
Meanwhile the joy whereby we ought to live. 
Neglected or unheeded, disappears. 

Wiser it were to welcome and make ours 
Whate’er of good, though small, the present brings — 
Kind greetings, sunshine, song of birds, and flowers, 
With a child’s pure delight in little things; 

And of the griefs unborn to rest secure, 

Knowing that mercy ever will endure. 


Trench. 


400 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


God's Greathearted (396). 

God be thanked for His great-hearted, 

From this mortal life departed, 

Whom the angels gather in 
From the hurt of pain and sin. 

They shall tread no pathway dreary, 

They shall never more be weary; 

They have reached the fair home-place 
•And have seen the Father’s face. 

Gone for them are tears and sadness; 

Who can measure their great gladness? 

They may well rejoice and sing 
For so rich replenishing. 

God be thanked for our departed; 

And God make us, too, brave-hearted. 

In that land of “no more pain" 

We shall find our own again. 

— Selected. 


L’Envoi (897). 

When earth’s last picture is painted and the tubes are twisted and dried, 
When the oldest colors have faded and the youngest critic has died, 
We shall rest, and, faith, we shall need it — lie down for an aeon or two, 
Till the Master of All Good Workmen shall put us to work anew! 

And those that were good shall be happy; they shall sit in a golden chair; 
They shall splash at a ten-league canvas with brushes of comet’s hair; 
They shall find real saints to draw from — Magdalene, Peter and Paul; 
They shall work for an age at a sitting and never be tired at all! 

— Rudyard Kipling. 

The Rose Beyond The Wall (898). 

Near shady wall a rose once grew, 

Budded and blossomed in God’s free light, 

Watered and fed by morning dew, 

Shedding its sweetness day and night. 

As it grew and blossomed fair and tall, 

Slowly rising to loftier height, 

It came to a crevice in the wall, 

Through which there shone a beam of light. 

Onward it crept with added strength, 

With never a thought of fear or pride, 

And it followed the light through the crevice length, 

And unfolded itself on the other side. 


FRAGRANT LIVES— OUR INFLUENCE 


401 


The light, the dew, the broadening view, 

Were found the same as they were before. 

It lost itself in beauties new, 

Breathing its fragrance more and more. 

Shall claim of death cause us to grieve. 

And make our courage faint or fall? 

Nay, let us faith and hope receive — 

The rose still grows beyond the wall. 

Scattering fragrance far and wide, 

Just as it did in days of yore; 

Just as it did on the other side; 

Just as it will forevermore. 

— Selected. 

“She Yet Speaketh” (899). 

V And still her silent ministry 
Within my heart hath place, 

As when on earth she walked with me, 

And met me face to face. 

Her life is forever mine: 

What she to me has been 
Hath left henceforth its seal and sign 
Engraven deep within. 

Goodness Outlasting Death (900). 

T sing not Death. Death is too great a thing 
For me to dare to sing. 

I chant the human goodness, human worth, 

Which are not lost, but sweeten still the earth; 

The things that flee not with the upyielded breath. 

But, housed in sanctuary of simple hearts, 

Live undethroned when Death 

Comes to the Chamber of a mighty King, 

And sheds abroad the silence of his wing. 

Then shakes his raven plumage, and departs. 

— William Watson. 

Sow Flowers (901). 

Sow flowers, and flowers will blossom 
Around you wherever you go; 

Sow weeds, and of weeds reap the harvest. 

You will reap whatsoever you sow. 

Sow blessings, and blessings will ripen, 

Sow hatred, and hatred will grow; 

Sow mercy, and reap sweet compassion, 

You will reap whatsoever you sow. 


402 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


Sow love, and its sweetness uprising, 

Shall fill all your heart with its glow; 

Sow hope, and receive its fruition, 

You will reap whatsoever you sow. 

Preach Christ in His wonderful fulness, 

That all His salvation may know; 

Reap life through ages eternal, 

You will reap whatsoever you sow. 

— Ella Lander. 


If We Understood (902). 

If we knew the cares and trials, 

Knew the efforts all in vain. 

And the bitter disappointment, 
Understood the loss and gain — 
Would the grim eternal roughness 
Seem — I wonder — just the same? 
Should we help where now we hinder? 
Should we pity where we blame? 

Ah! we judge each other harshly, 
Knowing not life’s hidden force; 
Knowing not the fount of action 
Is less turbid at its source; 

Seeing not amid the evil 
All the golden grains of good; 

And we’d love each other better 
If we only understood. 

Could we judge all deeds by motives 
That surround each other’s lives, 

See the naked heart and spirit. 

Know what spur the action gives, 
Often we should find it better. 

Purer than we judge we should. 

We should love each other better 
If we only understood. 

Could we judge all deeds by motives, 
See the good and bad within, 

Often we should love the sinner 
All the while we loathe the sin. 
Could we know the powers working 
To overthrow integrity, 

We should judge each other’s errors 
With more patient charity. 


Rudyard Kipling. 


FRAGRANT LIVES— OUR INFLUENCE £03 

The Heart Of a Friend (S03). 

A heart that is glad when your heart is gay, 

And true in the time of cares; 

That halves the trials of a fretful day 
And doubles the joys that it shares. 

A heart than can cheer your heart with its song. 

And comfort your hour of need 

A heart that is brave and faithful and strong, 

Wherever misfortune may lead. 

A heart that is yours when the way seems dark. 

And yours in sunshine, too; 

A heart that cares not for rank or mark, 

But only the heart of you. 

A heart that will shield when others abuse 
The name that it knows is fair. 

That would rather miss fortune and fame than lose 
The love of a friend that is dear. 

A heart that will hear no ill of you, 

But is ever quick to defend, 

A heart that is always true, steel true 
Such is the heart of a friend. 

— Cornelia Seyle. 


Love (904). 

There grew a little flower once. 

That blossomed in a day, 

And some said it would ever bloom. 

And some ‘twould fade away; 

And some said it was Happiness, 

- And some said it was Spring, 

And some said it was Grief and Tears, 

And many such a thing; 

But still the little flower bloomed. 

And still it lived and throve, 

And men do call it “Summer Growth,” 

But angels call it love! — Thomas Hood. 

Obedient To The Vision (905). 

Calvin lived within sight of Mount Blanc, but there is not a line in 
his writing which indicates that he ever saw it. We live within sight of 
exalted ideals, the visions of nobleness and duty that come to us; but 
do our lives indicate that we give heed to them? This purpose so 
beautifully expressed by Professor H. L. Koopman let us make our own: 


404 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


When I am dead, 

May this with truth be said, 

On the rude stone that marks my lowly head, 

That, spite of doubt and indecision, 

In spite of weakness, lameness, blindness, 

Heart’s trickery and fate’s unkindness, 

Neglect of friends and scorn of foes, 

Stark poverty and all its woes, 

The body's ills that cloud the mind 
And the bold spirit bind, 

Still through my earthly course I went. 

Not disobedient 

Unto the Heavenly Vision. 

— Tarbell. 


Friendship (906). 

O who will walk a mile with me 
Along life’s weary way? 

A friend whose heart has eye3 to see 
The stars shine out o’er the darkening lea, 

And the quiet rest at the end o’ the day, — 

A friend who knows, and dares to say. 

The brave, sweet words that cheer the way 
Where he walks a mile with me. 

— Henry van Dyke. 

If I Should Die Tonight (907). 

If I should die tonight, 

My friends would look upon my quiet face. 

Before they laid it in its resting place. 

And deem that death had left it almost fair; 

And, laying snow-white flowers against my hair, 
Would smooth it down with tearful tenderness, 

And fold my hands with lingering caress — 

Poor hands, so empty and so cold tonight! 

If I should die tonight, 

My friends would call to mind, with loving thought, 
Some kindly deed the icy hands had wrought; 

Some gentle word the frozen lips had said; 

Errands on which the willing feet had sped; 

The memory of my selfishness and pride, 

My hasty words, would all be put aside, 

And so I should be loved and mourned tonight. 

If I should die tonight, 

Even hearts estranged would turn once more to me, 
Recalling other days remorsefully; 

The eyes that chill me with averted glance 


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405 


Would look upon me as of yore, perchance, 

And soften in the old familiar way; 

For who would war with dumb, unconscious clay? 

So I might rest, forgiven of all, tonight. 

Oh, friends, I pray tonight, 

Keep not your kisses for my dead, cold brow — 

The way is lonely; let me feel them now. 

Think gently of me; I am travel worn; 

My faltering feet are pierced with many a thorn. 
Forgive, oh, hearts estranged, forgive, I plead! 

When dreamless rest is mine I shall not need 
The tenderness for which I long tonight. 

— Belle E. Smith. 


The Shining Face (908). 

O friend of mine, whom I shall see no more. 

How little have the white sails borne to sea! 

All that love wrought still lingers here with me. 
Still, still we stand together by the shore. 

Men say of travelers, “They are far away;” 

And of the dead they say, “Their souls are gone;” 
Yet now I know we keep the soul alone. 

Bodies may travel, die — the spirits stay. 

Now hath God blessed me as the blind are blessed. 
Who, losing sight, have lost one sense alone; 

For all the powers of my soul are grown. 

The vision vanished, memory keeps the rest. 

And I have but to hark to hear thy song; 

Be still to feel thy presence, cheer and grace; 

And in my dreams I see thy shining face, 

Angel of God, to bid me still “Be strong!” 

— Charles P. Cleaves, in Youth’s Companion. 


Service (909). 

Let me be the author of a little kindly deed 
Of sacrifice and service for a fellow heart in need. 

Let me live a poem of the self-denying will 
To lend a hand of helping to a comrade up the hill. 

Let me be an artist of the sunlight on the flowers, 

To fill some brother’s darkness with the dream of golden hours 

Let me be a master of the music that the birds 

Have set to artless measures with the most unstudied words! 


406 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


Let me be a captain of the little hosts of joy 

That lead us back in memory to the days of barefoot boy. 

Let me be a ruler in the land of lost delight, 

With power to keep a comrade from the darkness of the night. 
And if I serve but lamely, and if my song be poor. 

Ah! may it bear the blossom of green beauty to thy door. 

From lane and hill and hollow, until the city street 

Grows like a dream of Eden with the bright blooms round its feet? 

— Baltimore Sun. 

‘Thou Shalt Be Missed.”— 1 Sam. 20:18 (910). 

Your place is empty. You have gone away. 

Oh, how we miss you every day. 

Tears fill our eyes to see your empty chair. 

And, folded carefully away, the clothes you used to wear. 

How empty seems the house; our hearts so sore; 

For oh! the place that knew you will know you nevermore. 

Your place is empty. How our sad hearts yearn — 

If that could only be — for your return. 

God give us grace and strength, our faith and hope renew. 
For you will not return to us, but we will go to you! 

Your place is empty here, for so God willed; 

But there, in heaven, your place is filled! 

Your place is empty! God calls us, one by one, 

To homes prepared by Him, when earthly work is done. 

AVe would not have you leave that world of bliss, 

E’en if we could, beloved, bring you back again to this; 

Back to this world of sorrow, of suffering, again, 

To long days, full of weariness, to nights of ceaseless pain. 
Although we sorely miss you, the time will not be long 
When we will hear your voice in heaven’s glad song. 

Your place is empty here, as soon my place will be; 

When my home there is ready, then God will send for me. 

My thoughts keep turning heavenward, but if it be God’s will 
To leave me here a little while, where dear ones need me still. 
The days are swiftly passing and life will soon be done — 

For me it is life’s evening, and the low setting sun. 

I am wearying for my loved ones, for, oh, I miss them so; 

And when God sends for me I’ll be ready then to go. 

To that blest land of happiness from which none ever roam. 

Then my place will be empty, when God hath called me home. 

— R. M. Moody. 


Remembered Smiles (911). 

When in the dusk of some calm eventime, 

They softly pass, the treasure-laden years. 
Slow rainswept hours, amid the echoing chime 
Of festive peal, or knell tolled out with tears; 


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407 


Wliat stirs thei heart? A wraith from Memory’s land 
Of some brave splendor? Nay, but rather this — 
Remembered smiles, a heartease from the hand 
Of one who loved us, and a child’s pure kiss. 

— Mary M. Wilshere. 


408 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


TEXTS AND TREATMENT HINTS. 

“He Went About Doing Good.”— Acts 10:38 (912). 

I. It was preeminently true of Christ. 

II. It may be true of us. 

III. We should live to make it true of us. This is the ideal life. 
Its influence lingers on after death has claimed the man. 

IV. It is an epitaph which may be truthfully written over many a 
good man. 

“This, That This Woman Hath Done (Shall) Be Told for a Memorial 
of Her.”— Matt. 26:13 (913). 

I. It was a deed of loving service. 

II. It was done to Christ. 

III. Lives rich in generous ministries rendered for Christ’s sake 
write their own best records. 

IV. Those records are the brightest page of the world’s history. 

“And All the Widows Stood by Him Weeping, and Showing the Coat* 
and Garments Which Dorcas Made, While She Was With Them.” 
—Acts 9:39 (914). 

I. The noblest life is the life of tender sympathy which finds 
expression in kindly deeds. 

II. Such lives are enshrined in the grateful memories of multitudes. 
They join the “choir invisible.” 

III. Let us find an immortality in the thankful remembrance of those 
whom we have helped as well as in heaven. 


XIV. THE DEATH BED 


REFLECTIONS AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 

Experiences and Last Words (915). 

One of the sweet consolations of the weary pilgrim as he nears 
the end of the way is that then he often gets his clearest visions of the 
Celestial City beyond. Bunyan calls this stage “the land of Beulah, 
where the air is very sweet and pleasant and the sun shineth night and 
day, for this is beyond the valley of the shadow of death, and also out 
of the reach of Giant Despair; neither could they so much as see 
Doubting Castle from this place. Here, too, they met with some of the 
inhabitants of the land they were going to, for here the shining ones 
often walked, because it is on the very borders of heaven.” 

It is sometimes so. Many of God’s pilgrims have these hours of 
vision in the closing stage of the journey, just as Moses got a sublime 
vision of Canaan from Pisgah’s top. There are Pisgahs everywhere to 
the heart of faith. A mountain-solitude, the chamber of prayer, the 
sacramental feast, have often seemed to open all heaven to the wonder- 
ing eye. But the chief mount of vision is just on this side of the river 
of death. The seers who see most of the glory are those who are 
appointed to die. There is a light sometimes upon a dying face that 
reflects a hidden sun, and murmurs are heard on dying lips that seem 
snatches of the songs of heaven. From meanest beds, in poorest garrets, 
God’s dying saints have sometimes had visions of the coming glory far 
transcending anything of which poet ever dreamed. — Rev. J. H. Knight. 

Perfect Peace in Death (916). — In the shipwreck of earthly hope 
we can have perfect peace; in the swellings of Jordan, too, we ought 
to have the same perfect peace, peace as perfect as in the heavenly home 
itself. — Selected. 


The Life's Utterance (917). 

The meaning of a sentence cannot be gathered into its last word; 
the last word takes significance from what has gone before. So with 
life. Dying utterances and even thoughts may not be taken into account 
Every dying man would be a saint. A great Southern statesman said 
to those who asked if some one should pray for him, as his pulse was 
failing: “No; my life must be my prayer. This solemn moment is not so 
significant as the solemn years that are gone. Let them stand.” 

Grotius (918). — Grotius, an eminent expounder of the law, and one of 
the greatest scholars of his age, said on his death-bed: “Heu! vitam 
perdidi operose, nihil agendo.” “I have trifled away life laboriously, 
doing nothing.” 


*10 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


Bunsen (919). 

The dying Bunsen, looking into the eyes of his wife bending over 
him, said. “In thy face I have seen the eternal!” There are natures so 
rare and pure that they serve as mirrors of the heavenly. The influence 
of such transparent characters on society for good is immeasurable. 
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God — and blessed are 
they who commune with the pure heart, for through them is God revealed 
even now to the awed gaze of men. 


The Pilot Found (920). 

The other night I was called out to see a man who was dying, and, 
arriving at the house, I found it was an old pilot who had steered a 
well-known steamer up and down the Hudson river for years. He was a 
brave soul, but never did he prove himself braver than when the storm 
of death was beating down upon him. He was in fearful agony, but, 
pilot-like, he was perfectly calm and self-possessed. I talked to him of 
the Saviour’s love and power, and he listened to me with intensest 
interest; but it was not until I presented Jesus to him as the pilot’s 
Pilot, reminding him that he was now in the fog, beating up against the 
swift current of death, and that just as his old vessel needed someone 
with a clear eye and a strong hand to steer it when the tempest was on, 
so did his soul need a pilot to take him up the stream of death into port, 
and Jesus was the only one who could do that, did his face light up and 
the shadow of distress that had lain across it disappear. Then I asked 
him if he would take the Divine Pilot on board, and commit his soul 
into His keeping, and he uttered a glad and strong “I will” that touched 
all our hearts, and drew us instinctively closer to his bedside; and 
while we stood there, brightened and warmed by the sunlight on the old 
man’s brawny face, we sang to the dyi&g pilot that most appropriate 
hymn: 

“Jesus, Saviour, pilot me 
Over life’s tempestuous sea. 

Unknown waves before me roll, 

Hiding rock and treacherous shoal; 

Chart and compass come from Thee; 

Jesus, Saviour, pilot me.” 

He died shortly after, and the look upon his face as it lay set in 
death was so peaceful, so trustful, so triumphant, that it seemed to say 
to all who looked upon it — certainly to us who were present when he 
took the Saviour aboard his bark — “I met my Pilot, and through His help 
have made the port!” 

My brother, you will need that same Pilot some day. As a wise 
captain does, take Him on before you get near port. Without Him, 
what wilt thou do in the swellings of Jordan? If you have been on a 
bar at night, and felt that everything depended upon the man at the 
helm, you can appreciate what it would mean to come up to the inlet of 


THE DEATH BED. 


411 


death without a pilot, and be driven before its awful tide out upon the 
dark and trackless waters that lie beyond. Gcd save you and me from 
such a fate! — Rev. John Balcolm Shaw, D. D. 

Journey’s End (921). 

i 

The fact of death has always presented much of mystery to us. 
We feel in the presence of the dead a sense of defeat. The face of our 
friend shows no recognition of our presence. The eyes are closed. The 
voice is hushed. The heart is still. Our friend has gone. This form 
we see was his. But it has been discarded. And as we miss the old- 
time light in the eye and the cordial greeting we say, “Surely an enemy 
hath done this.” And we think of death as a despoiler. We name him 
“Terror” — “King of Terrors” — “The Last Enemy” — “Our Greatest 
Enemy.” 

And yet this view of death cannot be true. V\ r hen we think of it in 
such terms as this we are looking at the facts purely from the fleshly 
side, from the side of physical activities. When we think of God we 
know this view cf death is error. Our God is in control of the world. 
He has created us. He has constituted us as w r e are. Mortality is a 
universal fact. The preceding generations of men with their numberless 
throngs have all gone. There is no survivor of these past years who by 
any means, any skill, any subterfuge, has evaded the inevitable fact. 
Death is part of a universal plan of God. And He is a good God. We 
believe in His benevolence. We trust Him to be a God of love. He is 
righteous. “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” He is a 
God of lcve. “Like as a father pitieth his children so the Lord pitieth 
those that fear Him.” Hence a fact which He permits to be universal 
must be a beneficent one. Death, being universal, cannot be a fact to 
be feared. It cannot be an evil. It is part of an infinite plan — the plan 
of an Omnipotent goodness. The poet is true to fact and faith when he 
says: 

“And so beside the silent sea 
I wait the muffled oar — 

No harm from Him can come to me 
On ocean or on shore.” 

We are much wiser in our figures of speech with which we refer 
to death than we are in our usual attitude toward it. 

We speak of life as a “journey” and v/e picture ourselves as pilgrims, 
staff in hand, measuring out the miles along a roadway sometimes smooth 
and pleasant, sometimes steep and narrow and strewn with stones; 
making cur way at times in sunlight and skies of glory, and at other 
times in nights of storm and darkness, beset with dangers seen and 
unseen. — Rev. Herbert S. Wilkinson. 

A Convincing Argument (922). 

One strong argument for a future life, says the Homiletic Review', 
Is found in the unfinished nature of the earthly career. Reason remains 
unsatisfied, and we know of no explanation for this life if it is not to be 
filled out. President Y/illiam R. Harper just before he died, in January, 
1906, said: 


412 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


“I am going before my work is finished. I do not know where I am 
going, but I hope my work will go on. I expect to continue work in the 
future state, for this is only a small part of the glorious whole.” 

Evarts (923). — Evarts died like a rich, luxuriant tree broken down 
and killed by the weight of its own fruit. 

Gelimer and Saladin (925). 

Gelimer was king of the Vandals, and for years was a powerful 
sovereign. All that wealth, pomp and ambition could do failed to satisfy, 
and when led a captive, afterward, through the streets of Constanti- 
nople, at the chariot wheels of his conqueror, Belisarius, he too cried: 
“Vanity of vanities.” The magnanimous Saladin, the opponent of the 
chivalrous Richard, England’s lion-hearted king, lay dying surrounded 
by prince, peer and warrior. He bade them take his shroud and fasten 
it to his victorious banner-staff, and bid the heralds cry through the city 
streets: “This is all that is left, of all his greatness, to the mighty 
Saladin!” 


Happy in Death (926). 

Charles N. Crittenton, who devoted his life and ample fortune to the 
establishment of homes for unfortunate women in over seventy cities, 
died as he lived, a happy Christian. Not only his last words, but all that 
he said during the closing hours was recorded. Here are things he said: 
“It is God’s will — He knows best.” 

“I have tried to be a friend to these poor girls — always their friend.” 
“There v/ill be no dark river when Jesus comes.” 

The entire chapter of Isaiah 53, word for word. 

The Lord’s Prayer. 

Many passages of Scripture. 

The Apostles’ Creed. 

“Thank God for the victory.” 

Tried to sing the “Glory Song.” 

“Jesus, blessed Jesus.” 

“Florence, my baby — my baby.” 

“Good-bye, Jesus is coming.” 

“Beautiful — all is beautiful.” 

“Jesus is here.” 

“Glory — glory.” 


The Lord Holds the Lines (927). 

A Southern Christian woman, while dying, imagined in her delirium 
that she was riding in her carriage with her faithful servant on the 
driver’s seat. “Is David driving?” she asked. “There is no danger if 
David is driving.” “No, no, Missus,” replied the weeping negro at her 
side. “Poor Dave can’t drive now. De Lord has hold of de lines.” And 
the humble servant spoke the truth for all ages. The Lord of life holds 
the lines and guides his children safely through the gate of death into 
the Paradise of God, 


THE DEATH BED. 


413 


Sailing Away (928;. 

I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her 
white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is 
an object of beauty and strength and I stand and watch her until 
at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and 
sky come down to meet and mingle with each other. Then some one at 
my side says: “There! She’s gone!” Gone where? Gone from my sight, 
that is all. She is just as large in the mast and hull and spar as she was 
when she left my side, and just as able to bear her load of living freight 
to the place of her destination. Her diminished size is in me, and not in 
her. And just at that moment when some one at my side says, “There! 
She’s gone!” there are other eyes that are watching for her coming and 
other voices ready to take up the glad shout, “There she comes.” And 
that is — dying. — Evangel. 

Dying Words (929). 

“I do things that other men-at-arms do,” quaintly confessed Etienne 
de Vignolles, called La Hire, and contemporary of Jeanne d’Arc, daring 
death at the swordpoint. “O God, do Thou to me in this day of battles 
as I would do to Thee, if Thou were La Hire and I were God.” “Thank 
God, I have done my duty,” rejoiced Lord Nelson, his earthly triumphs 
over. “A king should die standing,” remarked Louis XVIII, making a 
final effort toward royal dignity. Many centuries earlier the Emperor 
Vespasian had died saying the same thing, “it is a great consolation to 
me in my last hour,” was the last speech of Frederick V of Denmark, 
“that I have never willfully offended anyone, and that there is not a 
drop of blood on my hands.” 

The End of the Journey (930). 

We are wise when we think of death as the journey’s end. The 
pilgrim has reached the place of rest and joy. The miles were weary, 
perhaps, but worth while for that which lay beyond. 

The voyage was stormy, but the vessel has come safely to port. 
Behind are all the dangerous deeps, the tumultuous leagues. Here is 
quiet harbor, and harbor gladness, and congratulation. 

The day’s work is over. The evening recompense is here. Safely 
passed the hours of heat and toil. Finished the work which was set to 
be done. 

And our hearts can chord with the words of the angel, “Blessed are 
the dead who die in the Lord.” And with the apostle’s declaration: “For 
to me to live is Christ, but to die is gain.” 

When we think of death with aversion it is because of conscience. 
It is because we know we are not at peace with the God of goodness 
whom we shall meet just beyond the fact of death. We know we have 
not done the things He wished us to do. We have not been careful of the 
trusts He committed to cur care. We shrink from telling Him what we 
have done with the trusts He gave us. “The sting of death is sin.” 


414 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


But Christ comes to take away our fear of death because He cornea 
to take away from us the burden of sin. He comes to free us from this 
condemnation. He comes to assure of the Father’s deathless love. He 
becomes the propitiation for our sins and “not for ours only but for the 
sins of the whole world.” Hence, we have “the victory through our Lord 
Jesus Christ,” and we say in the beautiful words of the dying Frances 
Willard what it is God’s plan that everyone dying should feel, “How beau- 
tiful to be with God.” Or what John Wesley felt when, dying, he said, 
“The best of all is God is with us.” 

Christ also takes away any fear that death should end all. He rose 
to demonstrate the reality of the resurrection life. He brought life and 
immortality to light in the person of Himself. He that was dead, known 
to be dead, proved to be dead, showed Himself alive and alive forever- 
more. He became the first fruits of them that slept. And we with Him 
can say, henceforth, “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is 
thy victory?” — Selected. 


P. T. Barnum (931). 

Mr. P. T. Barnum said, after recovering from a severe illness, speak- 
ing of his feelings and thoughts when confined to his bed: “I looked back 
and could hardly recall a benefit I had rendered to my fellow-men in all 
my life. The folly, the stupidity of fooling away the few years given us 
here in childish strifes, bickerings and differences, occurred to me so 
strongly that I resolved that the sun would never go down on me cherish- 
ing malice in my heart against a single fellow-being.” 

Horace Bushnell (932). 

When Horace Bushnell was dying, he murmured one day slowly, 
and in great weakness, to those around his bed: “Well, now, we are all 
going home together: and I say, the Lord be with you, and in grace, 
and peace, and love — and that is the way I have come along home.” 

It is the only way for us all — the way we must all tread — if from 
amidst the temptations and the trials and the sorrows of earth, we hope to 
find our way home together. — Martin. 

Strauss (933). 

At Ludwigsburg — where Strauss was born, and where also he died 
and is buried — a gentleman, one of his personal friends and admirers, 
told the following, of which he claimed to have been an eye and ear 
witness: Strauss had a daughter, whom he had, strangely, sent to a 
pietistic school, while he was separated from her mother. She was 
educated a pious girl, and subsequently married a physician. She was 
called home when her father was about to die, and was deeply affected. 
When he saw her weeping, he took her hand in his and said: “My 
daughter, your father has finished his course. You know his principles 
and views. He cannot comfort you with the assurance of seeing you 
again. What your father has done will live forever, but his personality 
will forever cease to be. He must bow to the unchangeable law of the 
universe, and to that law he reverently says, ‘Thy will be done!’” 


THE DEATH BED. 


415 


Theodore Monod (934). — Theodore Monod said that he would like 
the epitaph on his tombstone to be, “Here endest the iirst lesson!” 

Last Words (935). 

“Think more of death than me,” said Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. 
“I have taught men how to live,” was the dying boast of Confucius. 
“I have not so behaved myself that I should be ashamed to live; nor am 
I afraid to die, because I have so good a Master,” said Ambrose, saint 
and Latin father. “I shall gladly obey His call; yet I should also feel 
grateful if He would grant me a little longer time with you, and if I 
could be permitted to solve a question — the origin of the soul.” This was 
the closing utterance of Anselm,, eleventh century bishop of Canterbury. 
“For the name of Jesus and the defense of the church I am willing to die,” 
said Thcmas a Becket. — Advocate. 

Cowper, the Poet (936). 

I thank God is sometimes the case, I do not take my view of it from the 
top of my own works and deservings; though God is witness that the 
labor of my life is to keep a conscience void of offense toward Him. 
Death is always formidable to me, save wTien I see him disarmed of his 
sting by having sheathed it in the body of Jesus Christ.” 

/ 

(937.) 

For some there is no rapture, only a sweet expectancy. In weakness 
of body and weariness of mind hardly a word is uttered, and all around 
the bed are falling tears. 

Some, indeed, have even less than this. They die amid the shadows, 
trembling lest they should be castaways. Still, God’s redeemed and 
loved are just as safe in the chariot of cloud as in the chariot of fire. 
The victory is real, though the song of victory is reserved for the other 
side, to burst forth in the first moment of entry within the veil. “I have 
no raptures,” said a dying saint, “but I have perfect peace.” That is 
enough. The song will come -when the harp of heaven is in the hand, 
and the perfect voice can sing it as no voice can sing it here. 

What gives this perfect peace? The cross and victory of a Redeem- 
ing Lord who gives to all believing souls the comfort of His own assur- 
ance, “Because I live, ye shall live also.” It -was the custom, of old, for 
the king’s cup-bearer to taste the wine before putting the cup to the 
royal lips. If there w r as poison in it, the death of the cup-bearer would 
reveal the fact: the continued life of the wine-taster would be an assur- 
ance that the king might safely drink. So Christ “by the grace of God, 
tasted death.” He drank of the cup, and showed that there was no 
poison in it for Him, for “behold. He is alive for evermore;” and there- 
fore, Christian, there is no poison in it for you. He makes you a sharer 
in His own perfect life. Through the very lowest of your experiences 
Jesus -went, that into the very highest of His experiences you might go. 
^-Knight. 


416 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


A Singular Request (938). 

Mrs. L , who died not long ago in College avenue, New York, 

made a singular request on her death-bed. She was passionately fond 
of dancing, and her death was hastened by an over-indulgence in that 
amusement. When she realized that she was about to die, she requested 
that her remains might be laid out on a board intead of in a coffin, and 
that she should be dressed in her new ball dress of flesh-colored satin, 
with white slippers. She also asked that a fashionable hair-dresser 
should be employed to dress her hair in the latest style, and that her 
head should be turned to one side after death, to show the hair to 
advantage. Her desire was complied with, excepting that a basket was 
substituted for the board. After the remains were arrayed for the grave, 
the corpse was placed in a chair, the head turned to one side in a life- 
like position, and the picture was perpetuated in a photograph. The cir- 
cumstances of her making such a request of course drew a large number 
of curiosity-seekers to the funeral. — Pierson. 

Right. — “I was right,” said the dying Hensterberg. 

“Farewell.” (939) — When the Rev. C. Wolf lay dying, he whispered to 
his sister. “Close this eye, the other is closed already, and now farewell.” 

“All Is Over.” (940) — “Drop the curtain, the farce is played out,” 
sneered Rabelais, who previously had spoken of “going to the great 
perhaps.” Demorax, second century Greek philosopher, indulged in a 
kindred expression, “You may go home. The show is over.” 

“A Last Look.” (941) — When Dr. Belfrage lay dying, he expressed 
himself as longing to be conscious in his last moments, so as to have 
“a last look at this wonderful world.” 

Edmund Burke, the Statesman (942). 

Edmund Burke, when his rival at the election in Bristol died, in 
the midst of a hot and exciting chase for honor and promotion, said: 
“He who has been snatched from us in the middle of the contest, whilst 
his desires were as warm and his hopes as eager as ours, has feelingly 
told us what shadows we are and what shadows we pursue.” 

Voyage and Haven (943). 

We speak of life as a voyage and we picture ourselves upon the vast 
deep, sailing sometimes upon peaceful seas, and often amid tempests, 
avoiding as best we may the reefs of danger, meeting with what skill 
we have and what courage we can muster, the adverse currents and the 
buffetings of angry winds. — Selected. 

Ready for the Summons. (994) — Richard Baxter spoke of the coming 
of his death-day as the coming of his “third birthday,” and looked forward 
to it with the same joy as a child looks forward to a birthday feast: 
and good Rowland Hill used often to be heard singing softly to himself: 


THE DEATH BED. 


417 


And when I’m to die, 

To Jesus I’ll fly. 

Because He has loved me — I cannot tell why — 

But this I do find, 

We two are so joined, 

He’ll not be in glory and leave me behind. 

The Future Life (945). 

During my sickness my flesh was taken off me and flung aside like 
any other worn out and unseasonable garment; and, after shivering 
awhile in my skeleton, I began to be clothed anew and much more satis- 
factorily than in my previous suit. In literal and physical truth I was 
another man. I had a lively sense of the exaltation with which the spirit 
will enter on the next stage of its eternal progress after leaving the 
heavy burden of its mortality in an earthly grave, with as little concern 
for what may become of it as now affected me for the flesh I had lost. — 
Hawthorne. 


Light From the Tomb (946). 

The great artists of the world, when they have tried to picture the 
empty tomb of Jesus, have generally represented it with a great light 
bursting out from its somber depths. It is a fit representation. Easter 
is a glad and heartsome, and an illuminating day. The fact of the resur- 
rection throws a great light upon some of the most perplexing questions 
raised by these curious, doubting souls of ours. It brings some clear 
knowledge as to the conditions of life after death. For we remember 
that great word which declares that Jesus in His resurrection life is “the 
first-fruits of them that are asleep.” Which means, we imagine, that He 
is not only the pledge and assurance of the resurrection harvest by and 
by, but that He is a sample and illustration of what life after death is 
like. 

Let him who is eager to know what life in the yonder world is like 
study the words, the conduct, the employments and enjoyments of the 
risen Jesus. There is definite information there. — Selected. 

At Eventide (S47). 

I love to connect our word “serene” with the Latin word for evening, 
as well as with its own mother-word serenus — clear or bright. 

Often, after a windy, stormy day, there comes at evening a clear, 
bright stillness, so that at evening time there is serenity as well as light. 
So often in life’s evening there comes a lull, a time of peaceful waiting 
“between the lights,” the burden-weighted heat of the day behind, the 
radiance of eternity before. Perhaps the day has been in truth “life’s 
little day,” swiftly ebbing to its close; perhaps the worn, tired pilgrim 
has lived even beyond the measure of three-score years and ten. In either 
case it is in truth the evening. 

The dear face reflects “eternity’s wonderful beauty,” the sweet, 
serene spirit is freshened by dew from the heavenly Hermon, the frag- 
rance of evening flowers fills the air, the songs of birds come in tender, 


418 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


satisfied cadences, and even the clouds which remain are enriched and 
made radiant by rays from the Sun of Righteousness. 

We whose evening is not yet are entranced with the exquisite blend- 
ing of the warm human affection with the celestial flame kindled from 
the sacred altar. With hushed souls we minister and are ministered 
unto, until, too soon, the twilight time is past, and the evening and the 
morning have become the eternal day. — Selected. 

Deathbed Joy (948). 

“There has been a joy in prisons and at stakes, it has been said, far 
exceeding the joy of harvest. ‘Pray for me,’ said a poor boy of fifteen, 
who was being burned at Smithfield in the fierce days of Mary Tudor. 
‘I would as soon pray for a dog as for a heretic like thee/ answered one 
of the spectators. ‘Then, Son of God, shine Thou upon me!’ cried the 
boy martyr; and instantly, upon a dull and cloudy day, the sun shone out, 
and bathed his young face in glory; whereat, says the martyrologist, men 
greatly marveled. But is there one deathbed of saint on which that glory 
hath not shone?” Recall Stephen, seeing Christ as he was about to die. 
— Selected. 


Christ Versus Paganism (949). 

The Chinese when dying are generally terrified by the evil spirits 
they fancy they hear and see. A miserly merchant on his deathbed 
shouted out: “Don’t you see the evil spirits? They are calling for 
money. Get them money or they will have me!” His wife had to unlock 
the box and bring out strings of cash with which to appease the evil 
spirits. Contrast this with the death of a Chinese Christian child of 
which I have heard. She surprised the neighbors by saying she had not 
seen any evil spirits. She said: “There are no evil spirits near me; 
Christ is with me, waiting to take me, and why should I be afraid?” — 
Rev. E. J. Hardy. 


“He Died Climbing” (950). 

Like all life’s lessons, the personal significance of the resurrection 
is one which we increasingly apprehend. At no point can we say, “I have 
fully understood or attained.” Our reach is greater than our 
grasp and there is continual fresh light glowing from the risen 
Christ to guide us in our upward search. “Excelsior” is the descrip- 
tive life-motto of the man who realizes himself as one “risen 
with Christ;” and while he is never aught but fully satisfied with 
the perfections of his great Ideal, he never for one moment pauses to be 
satisfied in himself. Such pause, indeed, would be fatal to his true prog- 
ress, and would defeat the God-formed purpose of his life. There is in a 
little churchyard in Switzerland a simple inscription of the tomb of one 
who perished in an Alpine accident, which has always appealed to me 
with singular force: “He died climbing.” He had heard the call of the 
mountains, and lost his life endeavoring to respond. We have heard the 
call of the risen Christ, but, unlike the climber, we gain our lives in our 


THE DEATH BED. 


419 


sustained attempt to respond worthily. “Seek those things that are 
above’’ is a call to enjoy the largest possible life, for the very struggle 
develops latent possibilities and capacities, and each step upward is into 
fuller liberty and more perfect manhood. — Redeeming Vision. 

No Fear (951). 

A little child played in a large and beautiful garden with sunny 
lawns; but there was one part of it, a long and winding path over- 
shadowed by trees, down which he never ventured; indeed he dreaded to 
go near it, because a foolish nurse had told him that ogres and hobgob- 
lins dwelt within its darksome gloom. At last his eldest brother heard 
of this fear, and after playing one day with him, took him to the 
entrance of the grove, and leaving him there terror-stricken, went sing- 
ing throughout its length, then returning and taking the little 
fellow’s hand, they went through it together. And from that moment 
the fear had fled. So Jesus, having passed through the valley of 
death, gives courage to His people. “Yea, though I walk through 
the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for Thou art with 
me.” — The Expositor. 


Prepared (952). 

I went to see a man the other day who was sick unto death. The 
friends told me before I saw him that the doctor gave no hope. I went 
in and sat by his side, and I asked him if the Lord was with him in his 
sickness and gave him peace, and with a glad smile he said: “Oh, yes, 
all the time. I suppose I shall only last a few days at the longest, but it 
is all right; I have been getting ready for this for fifty years, and it is 
all right now.” God grant that you may so live, may so hear the voice 
of Jesus calling you to follow Him, and may follow Him so closely that in 
that hour of hours He shall come to receive you in peace. — Banks. 

The Gift of Death (953). 

God’s messengers are ever on the wing. In silence they cross the 
threshold, and when they go away they leave a footprint named a grave. 
God’s plans are not interrupted. There are no accidents, no catastrophes 
unto God. His wisdom and love are fully equal to every emergency — 
even to a grave digged in the grass. When the life-work has been done, 
when the harvest of influence has been sown and reaped, then He sends 
His messenger for release, guidance and convoy homeward. His latest, 
richest and crowning gift is the gift of death. At the summit of the 
desert palm is a single flowering bud. When the fullness of time comes 
the flower falls, the fruit swells, the seed drops. The flower dies and 
disappears, but the tree goes on. And it is the epic of man’s life that 
disappears but does not die. Our best beloved disappears, but out of the 
darkness comes the voice, saying: “I still live.” — Hillis. 

“I Know Whom I Have Believed” (954). 

There are to be found today men and women to whom Christ is as 
real a? though they held His fleshly hand and looked into His sweet human 


420 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


face. They are as sure that heaven is around them as that their hearts 
beat within them. They know that God loves them as certainly as if He 
awoke them each morning with a kiss. 

Some time ago I met with a picture representing two women in great 
sorrow. Standing behind the chairs on which they were sitting there 
appeared the figure of Christ stretching out His hand over them. They 
could not see Him, because their eyes were dim, but He was none the 
less present with them. He was near in all His effulgent brightness, with 
all His helpful power. At the foot of the picture this verse was written: 

“Unheard, because our ears are dull; 

Unseen, because our eyes are dim; 

He walks on earth — the Wonaerful — 

And all great deeds are dGne for Him.” 

What we need is the power to see — to see chariots and horses on 
the mountains; to see God all about us; to see the strong right arm of 
the Almighty stretched out to help us; to see that the darkest clouds 
and most threatening surroundings are under the all-controlling power 
of the everlasting Father. And seeing this, we shall have the prophet’s 
hope and the prophet’s faith and the prophet’s trust that they who are 
with us are more than they who are against us. The prayer, then, which 
befits our lips day and night continually is: “Lord, we pray Thee, open 
our eyes that we may see.” — Christian Advocate. 

A King (955). 

A consumptive disease seized the eldest son and heir of the Duke ol 
Hamilton, which ended in his death. A little before his departure from 
the world he took his Bible from under his pillow and read several com- 
forting passages. As death approached, he called his younger brother 
to his bedside, and after talking affectionately and seriously to him, 
closed with these words: “And now, Douglas, in a little while you’ll be a 
duke, but I shall be a king.” — The S. S. Chronicle. 

We Judge Ourselves (956). 

Slowly and painlessly consciousness returned. He looked about him 
and remembered. It seemed but a moment, and yet the life he had 
lived on earth was as far from him as if he had died a century ago. In 
the stillness and measureless quiet which enfolded him after those last 
agonizing hours he knew that he had already entered into rest. So deep 
was the peace which fell softly as if from the vast heights above him 
that he felt no curiosity and was without fear. He was in a new life 
and he must find his place in it, but he was content to wait; and while 
he waited his thought went swiftly back to the days when, a little child/ 
he looked up at the sky and wondered if the stars were the lights in the 
streets of heaven. One by one the years rose out of the depths of his 
memory and he recalled, step by step, all the way he had come: child- 
hood, youth, manhood and age. He read with deepening interest the 
story of his life, all his thoughts, his words, the things he had done and 


THE DEATH BED. 


421 


left undone. And as he read he knew what was good and what was ill; 
everything was clear, not only in his unbroken record of what he had 
been, but in a sudden perception of what he was. At last he knew him- 
self. And while he pondered, one stood beside him, grave and calm and 
sweet with the purity that is perfect strength. Into the face which turned 
toward him, touched with the light of immortal joy, he looked up and 
asked, “When shall I be judged?” And the answer came: “You have 
judged yourself. You may go where you will.” — Hamilton W. Mabie, in 
Parables of Life. 

Mozart. (957) — “Did I now say I was writing the requiem for 
myself?” 


Living Well and Dying Well (958). 

The list of striking and picturesque “last sayings” might be extended 
indefinitely, but to what further purpose? Enough have been given to 
prove the intrinsic oneness of all dying — as all living — humanity, to show 
that all sorts and conditions of the children of men can face the Great 
Adventure bravely and with good spirit, and to remind us that in death 
as in life “it is character that counts,” and that makes all the difference 
between supreme if quiet courage and the coward shrinking which 
anticipates by “a hundred deaths” the single world transition arranged 
by an allwise Creator. 

He who for our sakes traversed the Lonely Road in pain and sorrow 
went down to death loving and forgiving His enemies, caring for His 
friends, and shedding upon both past and future phases of existence the 
transcendent glow of His great heart and pure, did it because He had 
lived in this manner. And only those will exchange worlds with true 
dignity, hope, and sweetness who have trained for this final test, this 
wonderful experience, this Surprising Adventure, in the lesser, perpetual 
trials and vicissitudes of simple daily life. — The Christian Advocate. 

The Sustaining Arm (959). 

A serious surgical operation lying before me, with the certain knowl- 
edge that I was too weak to live through it save by God’s help, knowing 
also the alternative of death, and with a large family of young children 
who needed me, I laid my case before the Lord. 

Down into the death valley I must needs go and, thinking of the 
children, the way was dark and exceedingly bitter. The struggle was 
long and hard and I seemed to have no courage — the heavens were as 
brass. Always timid, I was afraid, wretchedly afraid, and homesick, too, 
for we were in a strange land and the speech was not mine own. 

At last the night before the operation — dreaded unspeakably — came; 
the dear ones had gone, the nurse also. I turned the pages of my Bible 
to find comfort, but found none. And then suddenly, as I lay later with 
the soft moonlight in the room and wonderful on the distant mountains 
so serene and majestic in snowy beauty, the help came. Words of 
divine promise began to steal into my heart and mind with infinite 
comfort. “For the mountains may depart but my loving kindness 


422 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


shall not depart from thee, neither shall my covenant of peace he re- 
moved, said Jehovah that hath mercy on thee.” 

“Thy faithfulness reacheth unto the skies, thy righteousness is like 
the mountains of God.” “I the Lord will hold thy right hand saying 
unto thee, Fear not.” 

Crowding, thronging, they came; not alone the dear familiar prom- 
ises, mine in many a storm of sorrow, and come now with a new and 
forceful message, but words I was not conscious of knowing at all, won- 
derful words, great promises, spoken as with the voice of One who 
comforts as a mother comforteth. And in that hour of utter weakness, 
a sense of my Father’s love all about me brought peace, perfect peace. 
I felt an indescribable joy and blessing such as I had never known. I 
fell asleep to rest all the night, unafraid. 

Of the weeks and months that followed when I slowly but surely 
climbed back to life and ministry I need not tell, though God was with me 
as never before and has been nearer and dearer through the years 
since. — The Congregationalist. 

Almost Home (960). 

Those who are familiar with John Bunyan’s immortal allegory will 
remember how he brings his Pilgrims, in the closing days of their home- 
ward journey, into the Land of Beulah. They had left far behind them 
the valley of the death shadow and the horrible Doubting Castle in 
which Giant Despair imprisoned and tortured his hapless victims. In 
this delightful Beulah land they found the atmosphere very sweet and 
balmy. They heard continually the singing of birds and saw an abund- 
ance of flowers blooming by the wayside. The sun shone by night as 
well as by day. 

Glorious visions of heaven broke upon them, for they were in sight 
of the Celestial City, and in their walks they encountered several groups 
of the shining ones. Here they were not in want of the fruits of the 
field or the yield of the vintage, for the King fed them with an abundance 
of all the good things which they had sought for in all their pilgrimage. 
As they walked to and fro in this goodly land they had more rejoicing 
than when traveling in regions more remote from their Father’s house. 
Beside their path were open gates inviting them into orchards and vine- 
yards, and gardens filled with flowers and fruits delicious to their taste. 
In answer to their questions, the gardener informed Christian and Hope- 
ful that these were the King’s gardens, planted by Him for His own 
delight as well as for the solace of the Pilgrims. The gardener invited 
them to make free of all the orchards and the vineyards, and bade them 
refresh themselves with the dainties. They were drawing near to the 
end of their long journey, and beyond the river that has no bridge was 
the New Jerusalem in all its flashing splendors. They were almost 
home! — C'uyler. 

A Fortune For You (961). 

Many years ago, over here in Plymouth Church, Henry Ward Beecher 
painted a picture like this: You are a poor man and ignorant. There i3 
a written document lying in a chest in ycur room. You cannot read the 


THE DEATH BED. 


423 


writing, and you do not know what that document contains, but you have 
a suspicion that by it you might become the inheritor of great fortune. 
You take it out sometimes and look at it, and vainly wish that you could 
read it; but you put it back without gaining any knowledge of its pur- 
port. By and by some kind friend, learned in the language in which it 
is written, comes to your home, and the document is taken out, and he 
examines it for you. He reads, and as he reads grows more and more 
attentive. He steps to ask you, "Who is your father? What was his 
father’s name?” You are full of interest and impatience to know what 
its contents are, until, unable to control yourself, you cry out, "Tell me 
what it is. Do not hold me in suspense. What is the news?” At length 
he says, "Why, sir, do you know that whole estate is yours? Here is 
your title. This is a will. The evidence is unquestionable. You are a 
millionaire. Your poverty is gone.” "Read it again!” you exclaim. 
"Read it aloud, so that I can hear the words! Can it really be so?” Un- 
til at last you are convinced and enter into the sweet comfort of the 
knowledge. 

So the world had heard whispers of immortality. There had been 
clouds and flaming chariots and vague, uncertain visions. But at last 
Christ came and opened to us God’s will as it is revealed in the New 
Testament, and made known the wondrous treasures of our inheritance. 
He read it aloud to listening ears — "In my Father’s house are many 
mansions. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go, I will come again, 
and receive you unto Myself; that where I am, you may be also,” — 
until men caught up the refrain and have been preaching in every 
graveyard of earth that forever and ever man shall live. So long as 
the lifeboat will attract the sailor battling for his life amid the waves, 
just so long the glorious hope of immortality through Jesus Christ will 
charm men from their fears to His resurrected side. — Banks. 


Show Him Your Hands (962). 

Bishop Woodcock of Kentucky has told a touching story about a 
little heroine whom he knew. She was left motherless at the age of 
eight. Her father was poor, and there were four children younger than 
she. She tried to care for them all and for the home. To do it all, she 
had to be up very early in the morning and to “Work very late at night. 
No wonder that at the age of thirteen her strength was all exhausted. 
As she lay dying a neighbor talked with her. The little face was troubled. 
"It isn’t that I’m afraid to die,” she said, "for I am not. But I’m so 
ashamed.” "Ashamed of what?” the neighbor asked in surprise. "Why 
it’s this way,” she exclaimed. "You know how it’s been with us since 
mama died. I’ve been so busy, I’ve never done anything for Jesus, and 
when I get to heaven and meet Him, I shall be so ashamed! Oh, what 
can I tell Him?” With difficulty the neighbor kept back her sobs. 
Taking the little calloused, wcrkscarred hands in her own, she answered: 
"I wouldn’t tell Him anything, dear. Just show Him your hands.” 
— Selected. 


.424 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


Safe (963). 

There is a beautiful legend told about a little girl who was the first- 
born of a family in Egypt, when the destroying angel swept through 
that land, and consequently who would have been a victim on that 
night if the protecting blood were not sprinkled on the doorposts of 
her father’s house. The order was that the firstborn should be struck 
by death all through Egypt This little girl was sick and she knew 
that death would take her, and she might be a victim of the order. She 
asked her father if the blood was sprinkled on the doorposts. He 
said it was, that he had ordered it to be done. She asked him if he had 
seen it there. He said no, but he had no doubt that it was done. He 
had seen the lamb killed, and had told the servant to attend to it. But 
she was not satisfied, and asked her father to go and see, and urged 
him to take her in his arms and carry her to the door to see. They 
found that the servant had neglected to put the blood upon the posts. 
There the child was exposed to death until they found the blood and 
sprinkled it on the posts and then it was safe. See to it that you are 
safe in Christ. — Moody. 

Deathbed Repentance (964). 

What, after all, is the evangelical doctrine of salvation? No man 
is ever accepted of God because of years of Christian experience and 
fidelity. "When at last I come to the end of my service and life — either 
by lingering illness or, may God grant it! by sudden translation, I shall 
have to use these words -when I come into the presence of the King: 

“Nothing in my hand I bring. 

Simply to Thy Cross I cling.” 

I shall not be received there because I have been a minister, or because 
I have struggled after righteousness. Salvation is not the reward of 
fidelity. I shall stand at the last accepted in the Beloved. This is the 
light that flashes over these dark hours in the mid-Atlantic, when the 
1,500 passengers of the Titanic were waiting their doom. There were 
amongst them men who had neglected religion — men of godless, perhaps 
corrupted, lives. I am not thinking of any individuals, nor do I know 
the state of heart of any. Can we doubt that in these last hours they 
awakened to the consciousness of sin, and cast themselves upon the 
infinite mercy of God, and were accepted by Him? Remember the story 
of the malefactor on the cross. We have only this one story in the 
gospels, that none may presume, but we have this one story, to show 
that no human heart need despair. We shall find one day that multitudes 
of unexpected guests have found their way to the light and peace of the 
homeland. — Rev. Campbell Morgan. 

Are You Ready? (965). 

One of the best men I ever knew was for a long time a pastor, and 
then, for a short time before his stepping over the threshold into 
heaven, a theological professor. He was one of those rare men who 
lived above the petty things of sense, of whom one might think and say 


THE DEATH BED. 


425 


without any irreverence, “Ah, the Master must have been something 
like that!” He was asked once what he would do and say if he met Jesus 
Himself suddenly, some day, on the street. Quietly and simply he said: 
“I’d like to say to Him: ‘Dear Master, I greet Thee. Long have I been 
waiting for Thee. I love Thee. What can I do for Thee now?” Greeting, 
watching, and waiting, loving, serving — are you ready just now if He 
come? Am I? “Let us not sleep — let us watch,” — Troxell. 




426 


THOUGHTS £OR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


ILLUSTRATIVE VERSES. 

The Valley of Sorrow (966). 

I came to the valley of sorrow. 

And dreary it looked to my view, 

But Jesus was walking beside me, 

And sweetly we journeyed it through. 

And now I look back to that valley 
As the fairest that ever I trod, 

For I learned there the love of my Father, 

I leaned on the arm of my God. 

Yes, as I look back to the valley 
From the crest of its glory-crowned hill; 

I call it my Valley of Blessing, 

So peaceful it lieth — so still; 

And sweeter its calm to my spirit. 

Than the chorus of jubilant song; 

’Tis there that the mourners find comfort; 

’Tis there that the weak are made strong. 

O fair is the valley of sorrow! 

God’s tenderest angels are there; 

Its shadows are lighted by Patience, 

And sweet with the fragrance of Prayer; 

Tired hearts gather strength in the valley. 

And burdens once heavy grow light; 

Ah, sweet are the “songs of the sunshine,” 

But sweeter the “songs of the night.” 

O beautiful Valley of Sorrow! 

So holy, so calm, and so blest! 

Thy ways are the fairest I travel 
This side of the Land of my Rest. 

And if some day the Father should ask me 
Which was best of the paths that I trod, 

How quickly my heart shall make answer: 

“The Valley of Sorrow, O God!” 

— Author Unknown. 


In Sorrow's Mists (967). 

“Mary!” 

In the gray dusk of morn she stands. 
The spikenard fragrant in her hands; 

She sees a dim form through the mists, 
A foot-fall coming near she lists. 

No strange, sweet thrill of holy fear 
Foretells her heart of faith’s reward: 

“He comes, the gardener,” she says; 

And lo, it is the Lord! 


THE DEATH BED. 


427 


“Mary!” 

We stand amid the mists like thee! 

The close at hand we cannot see; 

Not knowing wnat they bring, we greet 
Each day, and every soul, we meet; 

But what seems sorrow’s darkest hour 
May bring us faith’s reward. 

And when we say “the gardener,” 

Behold it is the Lord! 

Marion Douglas. 


The Home Light (968). 

Whether the road be steep or whether the sky be gray, 

You can sing and smile, o’er each lagging mile, 

If only you know, that after awhile 
There’s a tryst to keep, and a tear to stay 
And a hand to greet you, though long away. 

Whether the task be hard or whether the hand be weak, 

You can laugh and jest, if the hours for rest 
Bring peace and calm to your troubled breast, 

The flush of joy on a dear one’s cheek, 

And home the haven you joyful seek. 

Whether the night be dark, or whether the toil be vain. 

You can lift your voice and at heart rejoice, 

Though lost the effort and ill the choice. 

If the courage lost you can find again 
In a light Love sets in the windowpane. 

— Lalia Mitchell in Boston Magazine. 

The Stars Shining (969). 

Alas for him who never sees 

The stars shine through his cypress trees! 

Who hopeless lays his dead away, 

Nor hopes to see the breaking day 
Across the mournful marbles play; 

Who has not felt, in hours of grief, 

The truth, to flesh and sense unknown. 

That life is ever lord of death, 

And love can never lose its own! 

— Whittier. 

Answering The Call (970). 

Beneath the cover of the sod 
The lily heard the call of God; 

Within its bulb so strangely sweet 
Answering pulse began to beat. 

The earth lay darkly damp and cold, 

And held the smell of graye and mold, 


428 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


But never did the lily say, 

“O who shall roll the stone away?” 
It heard the call, the call of God, 
And up through prison house of sod 
It came from hurial place of gloom 
To find its perfect life in bloom. 


Emancipation (971). 

Why be afraid of death as though your life were breath? 
Death but anoints your eyes with clay, O glad surprise! 
Why should you be forlorn? Death only husks the corn. 
Why should you fear to meet the Thrasher of the wheat? 

Is sleep a thing to dread? Yet, sleeping, you are dead 
Till you awake and rise, here or beyond the skies. 

Why should it be a wrench to leave your wooden bench? 
Why not, with happy shout, run home when school is out? 

The dear ones left behind! O foolish one and blind, 

A day, and you will meet; a night, and you will greet! 

This is the death of Death: to breathe away a breath, 

And now the end of strife, and taste the deathless life; 

And joy without a fear, and smile without a tear, 

And work, not care nor rest, and find the last the best. 

— Maltbie D. Babcock. 


Into the Forever (972). 

What may we take unto the vast forever? 

That marble door 

Admits no fruit of all our long endeavor; 

No fawn-wreathed crown we wore, 

No garnered lore. 

What can we bear beyond the unknown portal? 
No gold, no gains 

Of all our toiling; in the life immortal 
No hoarded wealth remains, 

Nor guilt nor stains. 

Naked from out the far abyss behind us 
We entered here; 

No word came with our coming to remind us 
What wondrous world was near, 

No hope, no fear. 


THE DEATH BED. 


42_$ 


In to the silent, starless night before us. 

Naked we glide; 

No hand has mapped the constellations o'er us. 

No comrade at our side. 

No chart, no guide. 

Yet fearless toward the midnight black and hollow 
Our footsteps fare; 

JThe beckoning of a Father’s hand we follow — 

His love alone is there; 

No curse, no care. 

— E. R. Sill. 


Gone Before (973). 

Though he that ever kind and true 
Kept stoutly step by step with you. 

Your whole long, gusty lifetime through. 

Be gone awhile before, 

Be now a moment gone before; 

Yet doubt not; know the seasons shall restore 
Your friend to you. 

He has but turned a corner — still 
He pushes on with right good will 
Through mire and maish, by heugh and hill. 
That self-same arduous way — 

That self-same upland, hopeful way 
That he and you through many a doubtful day 
Attempted still. 

He is not dead, this friend — not dead. 

But in the path we mortals tread, 

Got some few, trifling steps ahead 
And nearer to the end, 

So that you, too, once past the bend. 

Shall meet again, as face to face, this friend 
You fancy dead. 

Push gaily on, strong heart! the while 
You travel forward mile by mile, 

He loiters with a backward smile 
Till you can overtake, 

And strains his eyes to search his wake, 

Or whistling as he sees you through the brake. 
Waits on a stile. 


■Robert Louis Stevenson. 


430 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 

When I Have Gone Away (974). 

When I have gone away, dear heart. 

And left the scenes of earth behind, 

Each link that forms of life a part. 

The higher, larger life to find, 

Bring springtime flowers fresh and fair 
To lay above my place of rest, 

And let them whisper to me there — 

The flowers that I love the best. 

I know not now, dear heart, the ways 
Of that fair land of mystery; 

How souls through the eternal days 

Grow sweet, and strong, and glad, and free; 

But this I know — that love will last, 

Nor ever unresponsive grow, 

And precious memories of the past. 

Will bind me to the hearts below. 

Bring flowers for sweet memory’s sake, 

And lay them low where grasses wave; 

And they a deathless chain shall make. 

That reaches on beyond the grave. 

And past the touch of blight or chill. 

In fields where fadeless flowers grow. 

Living and learning, loving still. 

Believe, dear heart, that I shall know. 

— Julia E. Abbott, in Zion’s Herald. 


Christ Has Risen (975). 

Christ has risen — else in vain 
All the sunshine, all the rain, 

All the warmth and quickening. 
And renewal of the spring. 

Vain they were to charm our eyes, 
Greening earth and gracious skies, 
Growth and beauty, bud or bloom. 
If within their fast-sealed tomb 
All our dearer dead must dwell, 
Sharing not the miracle. 


THE DEATH BED. 


431 


Crocus tips in shining row, 

Welcome, for your sign we know. 

Every bud on every bough 
Has its message for us now. 

Since the Lord on Easter Day 
Burst the bonds of prisoning clay; 

All the springtime has a voice. 

Every heart may dare rejoice. 

Every grave, no more a prison, 

Join the chorus, “Christ is risen.” 

— Susan Coolidge. 

The Two Mysteries (976). 

We know not v/hat it is, dear, this sleep so deep and still; 

The folded hands, the awful calm, the cheek so pale and chill; 

The lids that will not lift again, though we may call and call; 

The strange white solitude of peace that settles over all. 

We know not what it means, dear, this desolate heart-pain; 

This dread to take our daily way, and walk in it again; 

We know not to what other sphere the loved who leave us go, 

Nor why we’re left to wonder still, nor why we do not know. 

But this we know: Our loved and dead, if they should come this day — 
Should come and ask us, “What is life?” not one of us could say. 

Life is a mystery, as deep as ever death can be; 

Yet oh, how dear it is to us, this life we live and see! 

Then might they say — these vanished ones — and blessed is the thought, 
“So death is sweet to us, beloved! though we may show you nought; 

We may not to the quick reveal the mystery of death — 

Ye cannot tell us, if ye would, the mystery of breath.” 

The child who enters life comes not with knowledge or intent, 

So those who enter death must go as little children sent, 

Nothing is known. But I believe that God is overhead; 

And as life is to the living, so death is to the dead. 

— Mary Mapes Dodge. 


Comfort (977). 

Thy comfort comes through pain. 

Thy tender hand the burden lifts, 

And hope shines through the cloud in golden rifts. 

And unto those who trust Thee come again 
Courage and peace and all such kindred gifts 
“Clear shining after rain.” 


—C. J. G. 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 

Easter Hope (978). 

Carry the flowers of Easter 
To the darkened house of woe, 

With their message of strength and comfort 
Let the lilies of Easter go; 

Scatter the Easter blossoms 
In the little children’s way; 

Let want and pain and weakness 
Be cheered on our Easter day. 


THE DEATH BED. 


433 


TEXTS AND TREATMENT HINTS. 

I Will Not Leave You Comfortless: I Will Come to You— John 14:18 (979). 

Our blessed Lord will have His people to be a joyful people. He 
would not have them of sad countenances and heavy hearts, but wishes 
them to rejoice in Him always, for the joy of the Lord is their strength. 
He was going away to prepare a place for them; He was coming to re- 
ceive them to Himself into those heavenly mansions in His Father’s 
house especially fitted for their occupancy, and in the mean time He 
would not leave them without “another Comforter,” even the Spirit of 
^ruth, who should not only bring to remembrance all that He had spoken 
to them, but mediate His perpetual presence and guide them into truth 
not yet revealed because they were not now able to bear it. Thus asso- 
ciated with and dwelling in them they would not be comfortless (Gr. 
orphans), but children of God, joint-heirs with Christ, and members of 
the blessed family of which Christ is the head. 

All these precious assurances of Christ to be with His own are made 
to His people today. We need not wait for His coming for us, or rather 
our going to Him, at death, or for His visible and personal appearance 
at the last day for the fulfillment of His promise, “I will come to you.” 
We are sure He comes to all who will receive Him here and now. He 
comes through the office and influence of the Comforter, the Spirit of 
truth, who takes the things of Christ and shows them unto us. May we 
open our hearts to receive Him, and become fit temples for His holy 
indwelling! — Joel Schwartz, D, D. 


Well Done, Thou Good and Faithful Servant: Thou Hast Been Faithful 

Over a Few Things, I Will Make Thee Ruler Over Many Things: 

Enter Thou Into the Joy of Thy Lord. — Matt. 25:21 (980). 

God has the highest possible claim to our services, and His claim is 
universal and constant. No peculiarity of natural endowment, great or 
small, nor diversity of opportunity or means of doing good, works any 
change in the matter of personal responsibility. All power and means 
of doing good are the gift of God, and to meet our obligations all must 
be consecrated to His services. 

Christ teaches us that the grandest possibilities are wrapped up in 
every human life; that by the right improvement of the talents given, 
be they ten or one, we shall by and by become rulers over many things 
and enter into the joy of our Lord; that constant devotion to God is the 
true philosophy of a successful life: “For what shall it profit a man if 
he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” Happy then the man 
who recognizes the will of God as the rule of his every-day life. It may, 
it will, require sacrifice, possible suffering, and failure in many worldly 
enterprises and prospects, but fidelity to God is assured success. To the 
faithful servant of God triumph is not far off. Today improve the talents 
given; tomorrow the Master will say, “Well done,” for the “Judge standeth 
at the door.” — Selected. 


434 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


He That Overcometh, the Same Shall Be Clothed In White Raiment; 
and I Will Not Blot Out His Name Out of the Book of Life, but I 
Will Confess His Name Before My Father, and Before His Angels. — 
Rev. 3:5 (981). 

What earnestness there must be in the life of a Christian if we either 
look upon how much he has to overcome, or how much he is in danger 
of losing! We, as Christians, have before us difficulties and temptations, 
enemies within and without, especially that dreadful and deadly disease, 
self-confidence, when we are pleased with what we are and therefore do 
not press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in 
Christ Jesus. But no matter what is in our way it ought not to dis- 
courage, still less deject us, as if it would he almost hopeless to think of 
overcoming. The last words in our text not only show us the glorious 
things we may lose, but they at the same time hold up before our eyes 
what we will gain by continuing the fight till the last enemy is overcome; 
yea, they are properly promises that ought to give us courage and strength 
to hold out to the end. Then what a victory, — white raiment, having our 
names in the book of life as members of the heavenly commonwealth, 
and confessed by our Saviour as being His before God and the world! 

“Lord, if It Be Thou, Bid Me Come. And He Said, Come.” 

—Matt. 14:28 (982). 

How different is the departure of a Christian from an apostate! 
James Hervey the English divine, died on Christmas, 1758. Having 
thanked his physician for his kind attentions, he exclaimed with holy 
exultation, “Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, for 
mine eyes have seen Thy salvation!” And turning to his attendant, 
he said, “Here, doctor, is my cordial.” 


XV. GENERAL REFLECTIONS ON LIFE 

AND DEATH. 


REFLECTIONS AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 

Belief and Life. (983) — Your life cannot be good if your teaching is 
bad. Doctrine lies at the basis of life. You may profess to believe a 
good many things, but in reality what you believe is the very substance 
and inspiration of your character. — Selected. 

Watch the Moves (984). 

A long time ago, in 1565, when Elizabeth, Queen of England, was 
playing chess, the French ambassador entered her room, and while 
watching the progress of the game, he said to her: “Madam, you have 
set before you the game of life. You lose a pawn. It seems a small 
matter; but with the pawn you may lose the game.” The queen under- 
stood his meaning, and saw the moral — that her progress in life as a 
queen depended upon prompt and right action in little things; that a pawn 
in the game of life must not be lost; that its value in the problem of life 
is incalculable. The lesson taught the queen is a good lesson for all 
thoughtful readers. Small mistakes in life are often serious in their 
results. If you would win the game of life, you must move your pawns with 
caution and skill. Small leakings will sink a ship. Little foxes spoil 
the vines. A single word is not much, but it may separate fast friends. 
One glass of ardent spirits is a little thing; but when it is drunk, the 
pawn may be lost that loses the game of life. A step may be a short one, 
and in itself of but little value; but if it is taken in the wrong direction, 
it will affect your destiny and turn you away from the pathway of success 
and honor. — Selected. 

The Upward Trend (985). 

If you are looking for that which is best in the men and women with 
whom you come in contact; if you are seeking also to give them that 
which is best in yourself; if you are looking for friendship which shall 
help you to know yourself as you are and to fulfill yourself as you ought 
to be; if you are looking for a love which shall not be a flattering dream 
and a madness of desire, but a true comradeship and a mutual inspiration 
to all nobility of living, then you are surely on the ascending path. — 
Henry van Dyke. 


The Great Companion (986). 

Professor James, in his book, “Varieties of Religious Experience,” 
tells of a man of forty-nine who said: “God is more real to me than any 
thought or thing or person. I feel His presence positively, and the more 
as I live in closer harmony with His laws as written in my body and mind, 
I feel Him in the sunshine or rain; and all mingled with a delicious 


436 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


restfulness most nearly describes my feeling. I talk to Him as to a com- 
panion in prayer and praise, and our communion is delightful. He answers 
me again and again, often in words so clearly spoken that it seems my 
outer ear must have carried the tone, but generally in strong mental 
impressions. Usually a text of Scripture, unfolding some new view of 

Him and His love for me, and care for my safety That He is mine 

and I am His never leaves me; it is an abiding joy. Without it life 
would be a blank, a desert, a shoreless, trackless waste.” — Forward. 

The Rounds on Which We Climb (987). 

Every low desire, every bad habit, all longings for ignoble things, 
all wrong feelings that we conquer and trample down, become ladder- 
rounds for our feet, on which we climb upward out of groveling and sinful- 
ness into nobler, grander life. If we are not living victoriously these 
little common days, we are not making any progress in true living. Only 
those who climb are getting toward the stars. Heaven at last, and the 
heavenly life here, are for those who overcome. — Scottish Reformer. 

Now in Eternity (988.) 

No man can pass into eternity, for he is already in it. The dead 
are no more in eternity now than they always were, or than every one 
of us is at this moment. We may ignore the things eternal; shut our 
eyes hard to them; live as though they had no existence, — nevertheless, 
Eternity is around us here, now, at this moment, at all moments; and it 
will have been around us every day of our ignorant, sinful, selfish lives. 
Its stars are ever over our heads, while we are so diligent in 
the dust of our worldliness, or in the tainted stream of our 
desires. The dull brute globe moves through its ether and knows it not; 
even so our souls are bathed in eternity and are never conscious of it. 
— Canon Farrar. 


The Ministry of Christ's Truth (989). 

Comfort — no other word expresses so well the ministry of Christ’s 
truth to my life. To be uncomforted is to be filled with despair. The 
soul trusting in itself may be brave, but only the soul that finds itself 
in God is comforted. 

From a happy childhood and a care-free girlhood I came to the stern 
responsibilities and cares of more mature life, only to find myself unpre- 
pared to meet them. 

Life had been to me a lovely dream-filled thing, and when I found 
myself face to face with Reality, I cried out in bitterness and rebellion. 
This hard, rough path was surely not for me; my path had been a beauti- 
ful shining path. I had started out with glowing purpose to follow the 
Gleam, and in the path at my feet every ray of light had darkened. If I 
had been called to a great sacrifice I could have risen to its heights; it 
was the very common character of my lot that humiliated me and robbed 
me of my strength. 


GENERAL REFLECTIONS ON LIFE AND DEATH 


437 


At this time there came to me a dark period of doubt. I did not want 
to be a doubter and struggled against its unhappy influence. With doubt 
came a distrust of God’s care of my life. It seemed as if it were of no 
concern to the Heavenly Father that I suffered. I was a constant prey to 
the sense of the futility of life. 

There remained of my wreck of faith and dreams a sense of God and 
a great desire to find the light. This sense of God comforted me even 
when I was unconscious of it, and always in the darkness I could hear 
His voice saying, “This way, my child, this way toward the Light,” even 
as I had heard my mother’s voice when as a little child I lost my way in 
the darkness of my room. 

That Voice in the dark — what infinite tenderness and patience in its 
call! Following it I found light and the comforting enfolding sense of 
eternal love and care. All the feeling that life was unkind and that my 
obvious duties were unworthy my best effort was lost. Strength and 
courage came as I learned to accept all as the fulfillment of God’s purpose 
in my life. 

Not only do those who suffer a great bereavement need the consola- 
tions of the assurance of immortality. In my own life, in the hard daily 
duty, the truth symbolized by Easter floods my way with light. Life tri- 
umphant in all the universe — this is the larger faith that banished my 
sense of the shortness and vanity of life. 

Good that dies not, Love that lives and blesses, even though He who 
called it forth has passed beyond our vision. These are the lessons of this 
Easter season when all nature is awakening to life and beauty. No longer 
baffled by a sense of the futility of life, but comforted with a great and 
abiding faith, knowing that I can never “drift beyond His love and care,” 
I am still following the path that once seemed so dark. It has been a way 
of privilege and blessing. — Mrs. John Mason Turner, in the Congrega- 
tionalist 


Growing Toward Christ (S90L 

The Christian ideal is Christ. Development toward Him is self- 
realization. We become more individual as we become Christian. Per- 
sonality is perfected by completeness of consecration to Christ. The 
process of becoming Christlike depends upon both the contemplation of 
His character and the receiving of His Spirit. Superficial and false 
standards of Christian character will continue to prevail unless the char- 
acter of Christ be carefully and constantly studied and imitated. Be- 
holding Him we become transformed into His likeness. But the process 
of transformation is not a formal copying, not an external imitation. 
It is a vital process in the heart by the agency of His Spirit. We cannot 
copy Him unless He quickens us; He will not quicken us unless it be our 
aim to copy Him. His outward life is the power that transforms us into 
His image, from glory to glory. A consistent, beautiful, powerful Chris- 
tian life is possible to all who will study His character that they may 
copy it, and who seek to be anointed with His Spirit that by it they may 
be inwardly transformed. — Selected. 


438 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


Life What You Make It (991). 

On the walls of an old temple was found this picture: a king forging 
from his crown a chain, and near by a slave making of his chain a 
crown; and underneath was written, “Life is what one makes it, no matter 
of what it is made." 


Noble-minded Men (992). 

High-minded, manly, duty-doing men are the chiefest need of any 
state or nation; for, without such men, no nation ever achieved distinc- 
tion or attained to greatness. Whatever else a nation may produce, if it 
does not produce high-minded, manly, moral men, it is well on its way to 
decadence and death. — Selected. 

The Time for Tenderness (993). 

Do not keep the alabaster boxes of your love and tenderness sealed 
up until your friends are dead. Fill their lives with sweetness. Speak 
approving, cheering words while their hearts can be thrilled and made 
happy by them; the kind things you mean to say when they are gone, 
say before they go. The flowers you mean to send for their coffins, send 
to brighten and sweeten their homes before they leave them. If my 
friends have alabaster boxes laid away, full of fragrant perfumes of 
sympathy and affection, which they intend to break over my dead body, 
I would rather they would bring them out in my weary and troubled 
hours, and open them, that I may be refreshed and cheered by them 
while I need them. I would rather have a plain coffin without a flower, 
a funeral without an eulogy, than a life without the sweetness of love 
and sympathy. Let us learn to anoint our friends beforehand for their 
burial. Post mortem kindness does not cheer the burdened spirit. Flowers 
on the coffin cast no fragrance backward over the weary way. — Hon. Tom 
Ochiltree, of Texas. 


The Traveler (994) 

The way is rough, and sometimes hard to tread; dust and mire are 
everywhere, the sun concentrates its oppressive rays, and the chill of 
winter adds its discomfiture; the traveler presses on; and, at last, reaches 
the summit of life’s achievement which lies on the border toward the 
setting of the sun; and from this vantage, if his steps have been guided 
by looking well to the hills of God, he is permitted a vision of his tri- 
umphal and glorious conquest — a fitly finished journey. — Christian 
Evangelist. 


Living Epistles (995). 

The world has been burdened with abstract forms of belief. The 
demand has become imperative for the unselfish, the pure, the consecrated 
life. The world, “amid all the resources of modern science and art" and 
profuseness, still bends and breaks beneath the burden of its “vanity 
and vexation of spirit.” Never in all the ages have the restless multi- 
tudes sent out so pathetic a cry for those who are “the shadow of a 
great rock in a weary land, and rivers of water in a dry place.” If ever 


GENERAL REFLECTIONS ON LIFE AND DEATH 


439 


water is poured upon him that is thirsty, it will be done by those who 
are rooted and grounded in Christ. This is the true life and this is the 
great and noble creed. Our Lord said to Peter three times: “Do you love 
me?” And three times the Lord said: “Go and prove it.” Formulas stand 
like statues, still and cold. With eager, longing eyes we still look for the 
blossoms and fruits of righteousness and true holiness of the individual 
life of the Christian. Our Christianity wields a general influence, the 
effect of which is to produce beautiful models of refinement, persons 
attractive and polite. Our schools have given us outstanding examples 
of good manners and lucid conceptions of the claims of propriety and 
common sense. Mere ci , ilization, the “gilded trappings of wealth,” the 
luster of learning, of the achievements of philosophy have nothing of 
which to boast in the matter of which we speak. The lizard may wiggle 
his way to the top of the tallest tree in this sunny land; but he is a 
lizard still, and must come down or die there. We read in the Bible of 
some who wait on the Lord, and that they mount up with wings as eagles. 
They do not grow weary; they do not faint. Their love is a “living fire, 
pure, warm, and changeless.” They are the keepers of God’s lighthouse, 
the dispensers of His truth. This life is the great and noble creed which 
none can analyze or answer or deny. 

“Think truly and thy thoughts 
Shall the world’s famine feed; 

Speak Luly and each word of thine 
Shall be a fruitful seed; 

Live truly and thy life shall be 
A great and noble creed.” 

— Selected. 


A Serene Old Age (996). 

Said one reverend in years and sanctified by much suffering borne 
with sublime serenity: “Wait! The clouds always break — the sun never 
ceases to shine behind them. I am past fearing storms of any sort; they 
always do good somewhere.” 

If any of us should attain fourscore, would that we might attain the 
rare beauty of her calm, pale face in which the large, gentle gray eyes 
shone with the constant light of content and peace. Lovely pictures 
have been made of such aged people, sitting where the setting sun shone 
upon them with its glorifying rays. In this case she who knew that the 
storms were “doing good somewhere,” seemed not to need Nature’s 
illumination. An inward light seemed to brighten her dear face, as you 
may have seen some fine bit of transparent porcelain lighted by an unseen 
flame. 

To grow more serene, more gentle, more confident of all ultimate 
good as years accumulate the evidences that the world is not a place of 
disordered misery in which suffering is the chief element and unavoid- 
able pain the destined end and way of those who dwell in it, is the most 
beautiful phase of human existence. 

Such as these have learned the potent charm of borrowed happiness 
and reflect the joy they see shining in your faces and gladdening your 


440 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


lives. The aroma of the flowers that do not bloom in their own gardens, 
perfumes their dwelling through the open casements which their gener- 
ous hearts fling wide open to catch all the light and perfume the sun and 
air can bring. They do not talk of what they have lost, they tell you of 
what is flowing into other lives. 

It is not rare for a lame man to enjoy the sure swiftness of another’s 
speed; it is not unusual for the blind to sit and smile while others tell 
them how blue the sky is and how the swallows skim across the meadows 
and the sea. Here is again a part of the whole; the speaker grows 
eloquent because of his brother’s lost sense and gains what is not his by 
nature in his effort to help him. 

It is hard in the grip of overmastering fear or in dumb astonishment 
at evidences of wrongdoing among his fellows or in the face of appalling 
disasters to be still and wait in certainty that there can be no failure in 
the plan of our Creator, regarding that which is to complete the develop- 
ment of our race. Yet our finiteness has a narrow boundary and our 
vision is neither as keen nor as sure as a bird’s. 

Blessed are they who can wait and hope and take every drop of joy 
they can wrest from life in and about them, until they can see how the 
beautiful action and reaction of the great machinery brings out the best 
of this world and strengthens our hope of the life beyond. — New York 
Evening Post. 


Unseen Angels (997). 

Dr. Doddridge dreamed that he died, and, clad in seraphic form, was 
borne by an angelic attendant to a glorious palace in one of the rooms of 
which he left him, saying: “Rest here. The Lord of the mansion will 
soon be here with you; meanwhile, study the apartment.” The next 
morning he was alone; and, upon casting his eyes round the room, he 
saw that the walls were adorned with a series of pictures. To his great 
astonishment, he found that it was his past life delineated there. From the 
moment when he had come into the world a helpless infant, and God 
had breathed into him the breath of life, until the present hour when he 
dreamed he died, his whole existence was marked down there; every 
event which had happened to him shone conspicuously on the walls. Some 
he remembered as perfectly as though they had occurred but yesterday; 
others had passed from memory into oblivion, until thus recalled. Things 
obscure in life, which had caused him pain, doubt, perplexity, uneasiness, 
were rendered clear now. The perils of his life were there — the accidents 
which had overtaken him in his mortal state, from all of which he had 
escaped untouched or but slightly hurt. One in particular caught his 
attention — a fall from his horse — for he recollected the circumstances 
well; it had been a perilous fall, and his escape was marvelous. But 
scattered in every picture, all along his whole career, he saw merciful, 
guiding, shielding angels, who had been with him unsuspected throughout 
his life, never quitting him, always watching over him to guard him from 
danger. He continued to gaze on these wonderful pictures; and the more 
he gazed, the greater grew his awe, his reverence, his admiration of the 


GENERAL REFLECTIONS ON LIFE AND DEATH 


441 


unbounded goodness of God. Not a turn did his life take, but it rested 
on some merciful act of interposition for him. Love, gratitude, joy, filled 
his heart to overflowing. — Selected. 

With Faces Toward the West (998). 

The Christian life is the ever ascending life. Eternal, it nowhere 
reaches its zenith. Its golden age is never in the past. No true inter- 
preter of Christian life harks back wistfully to some experience along 
the way, but like Paul, aged, battle-scarred and bound, forgetting the 
things behind be reaches forward to the future crown. And, like Rabbi 
Ben Ezra, each soul that has found Christ’s secret sings: 

“Grow old along with me. 

The best is yet to be. 

The last of life, for which 
The first was made.” 

There are, broadly speaking, three stages through which each life 
normally passes, and each of these stages contains its characteristic and 
proper satisfaction. 

The proper satisfaction of childhood is sheer gladness. The child is 
care-free, innocent, abounding with vitality and satisfied just to be in 
action. He is easily pleased. His spirit is akin to the birds and flowers' 
and needs no cause, nothing save a chance, to express the gladness that 
is in him. 

The proper satisfaction of a grown man is happiness. His life is a 
network of conscious purposes. His satisfaction is found in the accom- 
plishment of these purposes. He is ever setting up goals and striving 
for them — in business, in love, in the social relation, in personal morality, 
in human service. The feeling of worth which his life will have for him 
depends upon his success in reaching these goals. If he fails in love or 
in business or in service he is unhappy. If he succeeds he is happy. His 
purposes are his life and all things have meaning for him according as 
they help or mar these purposes. 

But to old age these conditions and their satisfactions are denied. 
The bounding pulse of youth is gone and with it the thirst for play. 
Lacking strength and time, age has no heart to undertake new ventures 
in the realm of deeds. What satisfaction, then, has age? Must the 
soul live henceforth in memory only, the memory of past deeds done or 
foiled? 

Not if somewhere on the way of life the soul has met with Christ! 
For Christ has that to give which transforms gladness and happiness into 
blessedness, and blessedness is a satisfaction the world cannot give and 
the world cannot take away. 

The passing years cannot rob the soul of blessedness. It does not 
depend upon the strength of pulse or limb. It is not conditioned by the 
success or failure of the soul’s purposes. Fortune comes and goes, but the 
blessedness Christ gives abides. Plans may tumble like a child’s tog 


442 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


tower, tears may fall, the heart be broken, but through sorrow and ill- 
fortune the soul’s faith may put forth leaves and blossoms as in per- 
petual spring. 

Now blessedness is the inalienable and proper satisfaction of old 
age. Empty, indeed, and full of pathos is the aged soul in whom this 
flower has not begun to grow. The gladness that ripples on the surface 
of youth soon passes. The happiness that attends the success of life’s 
enterprises will fade when the currents of energy cease to flow. But in 
the still depths of experience if the soul have blessedness it has a peace 
that passeth understanding. 

And the reason why blessedness may abide with old age when other 
satisfactions have passed away is because it is a gift of God, depending, 
therefore, not upon the success of the fitful and finite purposes of man, but 
upon the constant and gracious purpose of the Father. 

Gladness registers the soul’s sense of its place in the world of nature. 
Happiness registers the soul’s sense of its value in the world of human 
life. But blessedness registers the soul’s sense of its worth to God. — From 
The Christian Century. 


The Value of Life (999). 

There are circumstances so afflicting and straitened, so tormenting 
and hampering, that we are apt to think we do well if only we do not 
cry out and let all the world know how we suffer; but there is a better 
thing to do always, and that is to set ourselves with patience and self- 
crucifixion to think of others and do our best for them. In the worst 
circumstances, in circumstances so perplexing we know not how to act, 
there remains a something to be done which we could in no other circum- 
stances do, a good fruit to be borne which needs these grievous circum- 
stances as its soil, and which, when it is borne, will be more sweet to our 
taste eternally than all the happiness which success and pleasure in this 
world can give. The fact that our Lord thought human life — a life in this 
very world that we have to live through — worth living, and the most 
capable life for spending a divine fullness of wisdom and goodness in, 
show's us that there are objects on w T hich we may liberally spend our- 
selves in the persuasion that they will not disappoint us. — Marcus Dods, 
D. D. 

“Once to Every Man” (1000). 

“I can only pass this way once,” somebody thoughtfully said con- 
cerning life. Have you ever thought how that note of oneness strikes 
through everybody’s life in this world? In a moment — once a babe — 
once a child — once a youth; once becoming a young man or woman; 
once in the vigor of maturity; once in old age, should we live so long; 
once dying. All the stages we pass through only once. Really, when we 
come to think of it, our chance in this world is pretty narrow. If twice^ 
ness or thriceness were the note of our life here, a failure once or twice 
would not be so great a matter. But that grim fact of oneness makes 
living a mightily serious matter, doesn’t it? So the question — how to 
make this one life of ours in this world nobly effective — is a very prac- 
tical question for each one of us, is it not? — Wayland Hoyt, D. D, 


GENERAL REFLECTIONS ON LIFE AND DEATH 


443 


In, But Not Of (1001). 

Learn to be as the angel, who could descend among the miseries of 
Bethesda without losing his heavenly purity or his perfect happiness. 
Gain healing from troubled waters. Make up your mind to the prospect 
of sustaining a certain measure of pain and trouble in your passage 
through life. By the blessing of God this will prepare you for it; it will 
make you thoughtful and resigned, without interfering with your cheer- 
fulness. 

Be prayerful and you will be happy and innocent, and noble, too. Oh, 
my brethren, with deep earnestness would I urge you to pray, habitually, 
reverently, trustfully to pray to your heavenly Father, and never to rise 
from your knees until you feel that you rise victorious, and that you have 
been saying to God in the heartfelt purpose which gave might to the 
olden patriarch: “I will not let thee go, except thou bless me.” — Frederic 
W. Farrar. 

With God. (1002) — The heaven I desired was a heaven of holiness; 
to be with God and to spend my eternity in divine love and holy com- 
munion with Christ. — Jonathan Edwards. 

The Only Unfading Crown. (1003) — Crowns and diadems are loseable 
things; it is only in the other world that there is a crown of glory that 
fadeth not away. — Matthew Henry. 

“What Shall It Profit?” (1004). 

What did Judas gain? The scorn of men, remorse, the death of a 
suicide. He lost his soul. “At Aix-la-Chapelle is the tomb of the great 
Emperor Charlemagne. He was buried in the central space beneath the 
dome; but the manner of his burial is one of the most impressive ser- 
mons ever preached. In the death chamber beneath the floor he sat on 
a marble chair — the chair on which kings had been crowned — and wrapped 
in his imperial robes, a book of the gospel lay open in his lap; and, as 
he sat there, silent, cold, motionless, the finger of a dead man’s hand 
pointed to the words of Jesus, ‘What shall it profit a man if he gain the 
whole world and lose his own soul?’ ” 

A Beautiful Life (1006). 

In one of the English cathedrals there is a monument to one of 
England’s great and self-sacrificing bishops, Selwyn. Above the sarco- 
phagus, which is of v/hite marble, there is the recumbent figure of the 
great missionary, with a beautiful, placid countenance and the hands 
folded crosswise on the breast. A window, cross-shaped, filled v/ith 
crimson glass, is so placed that when the noontide sun falls upon it, it 
throws the shadow of a blood-stained cross on the breast and face of the 
noble bishop beneath. It tells the secret of his beautiful life and of his 
peace. His life was made complete when he lived it under the cross. 
He walked humbly with Christ. And he did justly and loved mercy and 
was God’s child. 


444 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


Empty Lives (1007). 

Think of the result of existence in the man or woman who has lived 
chiefly to gratify the physical appetites — think of its real emptiness, 
its real repulsiveness when old age comes and the senses are dulled and 
the roses have faded and the lamps at the banquet are smoking and 
expiring and desire fails, and all that remains is the tierce, insatiable, 
ugly craving for delights which have fled for evermore; think of the 
bitter, burning vacancy of such an end, and you must see that pleasure 
is not a good haven to seek in the voyage of life. — Henry van Dyke. 

Spiritual Vision (1008). 

Men see what they want to see. Mozart and a friend were walking 
when a lark soared toward the heavens singing as it went. “What a 
shot,” said the friend. “What would I give to be able to catch that trill,” 
said Mozart. A breeze arose. “It will startle a hare,” said the friend. 
“What a diapason from God’s great organ,” said Mozart. Noah’s raven 
found carrion and returned not; but the dove came back with an olive 
leaf. A man sees what he wants to see, and what he wants to see is the 
measure of the man. Jesus saw a vast and hungry crowd and was moved 
with compassion for them and fed them. The disciples a thronging con- 
course of tresspassers upon their privacy and asked that they be sent 
away. No doubt there is great need today for a change in conditions of 
life, but there is a far greater need for a change in us that we may come 
to see the conditions as they really are, and not as we with imperfect 
spiritual vision think them to be. Let us pray God to anoint our eyes that 
we may see as He sees. — Selected. 

Souls With Bodies (1009). 

I heard a gentleman say recently, and it seemed to me to contain 
fine thought-suggestion: “We are not these bodies of ours possessing a 
soul. We are living souls possessing these bodies.” It makes quite a 
difference which view we take. In the one case we shall make looking 
after the bodily things, the food, the raiment, the housing, primary; in 
the other case, we shall make them secondary. I do not mean that we 
ought to neglect a reasonable care of the body, but that we should value 
that for its ministry to the real life, the life of mind, heart, conscience, 
soul; and that we should never allow it to take the place of this higher and 
deeper and better life. This means that we do not live to eat and drink 
and sleep: we eat and drink and sleep to live. This means that we do 
not live for pleasure and recreation, but that we have pleasure and recrea- 
tion in order the better to live. The human mind is naturally hungry for 
knowledge, it wants to know. The human heart is naturally hungry for 
companionship, it wants to love. The human conscience, in its best estate 
today, is hungry for justice and equity, for uprightness and progress in 
personal character; it wants to see fair play; it wants to find itself 
advancing with every new day toward an ever-unfolding ideal. The soul 
of the man expressing itself through spiritual sensibility is hungry for 
the realities of the spiritual life: it wants to begin that life, or, if already 
begun, it wants to develop it right where it is and in the hour that now is. 
It is all these things taken together — the affairs of mind, heart, con- 


GENERAL REFLECTIONS ON LIFE AND DEATH 


445 


science, soul — that make real living, make manhood and womanhood, 
make the trend toward unending improvement, the climbing after the 
better and the best. It is in service of all these that we want to “drink 
the cup and wear the roses and live the verses.” Whatever else w r e do, 
we cannot afford to “quench the fires” which keep the intellect, the 
affections, the moral purposes, the spiritual sensibilities alive. And, if 
there are those in our time, and in this great country of ours, so badly 
off in material conditions that these fires will not burn in and for them, 
then it is your duty and mine, and the duty of every fortunate man and 
woman, to help make those conditions better. What wrong can be so 
great as that which shuts off from men and women and little children 
the opportunities of growth along the lines of mind, heart, conscience, 
and soul? We must not quench these fires in ourselves, we must do what 
we can to make it possible for them to burn for the least fortunate of our 
brothers and sisters. — Rev. F. A. Hinckley, in the Christian Register. 

Our Work a Divine Calling (1010). 

There are hours in w r hich work is transfigured — in which it does not 
appear drudgery, but a mission; in which every duty is attractive. All 
work then becomes a divine calling; and we see that men are not only 
called to be apostles, but also called to be carpenters, called to be 
merchants, soldiers, sailors, called to be artists, inventors; and that one 
can sweep a room for the sake of God, and be happy in doing it. Until 
our work is thus transfigured, and we see religion in it, it must be often 
a burden and a drudgery. — James Freeman Clarke. 

A Crowned Soul (1011). 

Any one that sets out in this life for the purpose of being happy will 
have a pretty tough time of it. There is net happiness enough in the 
■world to go around, and the kind of which there is enough is not w’orth 
having. No one can ever be built up into a crowned soul by being 
favored with happiness. But when you go in for the best things, the 
fundamental things, and keep on doing so, somehow or other you will be 
likely to have a good deal of trouble and pain; but it will be pain which 
will have something divine in it, and something you -would not exchange 
for any so-called happiness under the sun. 

We are going to be through with this life before very long. The 
longest life is short -when it is over; any time is short when it is done. 
The gates of time will swung to behind you before long. They will swing 
to behind some of us soon, but behind all of us before long. And then 
the important thing will not be what appointments we had, or what rank 
in the conference, or anything of that sort; not what men thought of us, 
but whether w^e v/ere built into His kingdom. And if at the end of it all, 
w r e emerge from life’s w r ork and discipline crowned souls, at home any- 
where in God’s universe, life will be a success. — Borden P. Bowne. 

Truth and Right Immortal (1012). 

To us, limited by the environments of our earthly existence, seeing 
“as through a glass, darkly.” this is the supreme lesson of Eastertide; 
that there is no death for truth and right. We cannot turn in any direc- 


446 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


tion but we see re-enacted the tragedy of the Nazarene and the Cross. 
“Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne.” For wrong, 
in its absolute sense, includes all the folly, the ignorance, the weakness 
of the race. Truth, honor, and virtue are ever on trial before the courts 
of earth, ever being condemned to the cross. And we, like the faithful 
women at the tomb, weep over our fallen idols, “not knowing the power 
of the resurrection.” Like them, we bring our sweet spices to anoint the 
dead body, thinking that nothing is to be done; that the three days have 
become the type of all the days to follow. “But the three days pass, and 
then, joy of all joys, comes the resurrection morn! Hopes renewed, prom- 
ises fulfilled, joy succeeding sorrow, victory following defeat! ‘Peace be 
unto you/ is the salutation of the risen Christ.” 

Working Toward the Same Goal (1013). 

No man has ever done his best; no man has shown fully what there 
is in him; no man has really made himself known; the tragedy of life is 
its solitudes. We walk alone. No one understands. We cannot reveal 
ourselves even to those most with us. The tragedy of life is its loneliness. 

“Yes! in the sea of life enisled. 

With echoing straits between us thrown. 

Dotting the shoreless watery wild, 

We mortal millions live alone.” 

“The irresponsive silence of the land. 

The irresponsive sounding of the sea, 

Speak both one message of one sense to me: 

Aloof, aloof, we stand aloof.” 

Is that forever to be so? Will the unfolding, the self-disclosure, 
never come? We may think, indeed, that to great souls this is given in 
the present world — that Dante and Milton and Shakespeare and Raphael 
and Angelo and Solon and Plato and Beethoven did reveal themselves 
fully. What fatuity! It is said of Ole Bull that he was found on the 
wet rocks at night, drawing the bow over his violin. He said he was 
trying to put into his violin the anguish of the sea. He could not, nor 
could any Beethoven or Handel, Milton or Raphael unfold what they felt 
— in their own souls. Think of what they heard and saw and felt! The 
picture was larger than the canvas. “It is not lawful for a man to utter,” 
said the apostle of his own vision when he had his glimpse of heaven; 
not unlawful because it w r as forbidden, but because it was beyond his 
powers. It is no less true of the visions of Dante and Beethoven and Fra 
Angelico. It was not possible, not “lawful.” It is always so. Man can- 
not express himself here. Hence the need for heaven, that there may 
yet be another opportunity. 

And if so concerning majestic souls which from their urns still rule 
the world, if they could not utter in speech or chisel or brush the things 
they felt, what shall we say of common humanity, those who never have 
been even awakened to their powers, but are like those who sleep beneath 
the yews of the ancient English churchyard, who, had they been awak- 
ened, 


GENERAL REFLECTIONS ON LIFE AND DEATH 


44? 


“The rod of empire might have swayed, 

Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre?” 

The tragedy of this world is its incompleteness. Therefore heaven 
is a necessity. Life must be more than a broken arch. 

There is a piece of sculpture by French. It is of a youth chiseling 
with passionate haste and enthusiasm the marble, and already the form 
of a sphinx appearing. But as he works, making haste to produce his 
masterpiece, a dark form stands beside him, sable-clad, silent. She 
touches the uplifted hand holding the mallet. It is all over. The sable 
figure is Death. The artist is falling dead, and his lifework? It is incom- 
plete beside him. 

Now we make a point that the Power which has endued us with life 
can make life go on if He wants to. He who has brought before the 
universe a being like man, a being that loves Him, worships Him, that 
feels and suffers like a god, has not so impoverished Himself in power 
that He cannot cause that being forever to continue and to grow and 
mature, if He wants him to do so. God is not a bankrupt in His own 
universe. He has not set in motion a scheme of things which ends, as 
far as man is concerned, in a mockery; that is, he has not if he is a 
Christlike God. That artist is entitled to finish his masterpiece. It is in 
him. He has a right to make himself known. 

Sometime, somewhere, in the ample ages and the boundless creation 
I shall attain to what I have dreamed. I shall see the Pilot’s face when 
I have crossed the bar. I hear the Pilot saying now, “Rejoice, be glad, 
your great, your real reward shall not fail you. Your great reward is in 
heaven.” The supreme reality is heaven. — From “Easter Reflections.” 

The Surrendered Life. (1014) — No man has ever lived in perfect sur- 
render to the will of God unless he had made a free surrender of his life 
to the world. — Rev. R. J. Campbell, M. A. 

Too Busy to Tell About Jesus (1015). 

While evangelistic tent meetings were in progress in a certain sec- 
tion in New York City, a little girl in an Italian center came to her 
mother and asked her to tell about Jesus. “I am too busy,” was the 
weary mothers reply. “Go to the tent, and the people there will tell 
you about Him.” 

Good mothers, with family cares and labors to fill the days and 
nights, are very busy women. They find very little time for anything 
else. Some find no time for needed rest, and are worn down into in- 
validism or early death. 

But however busy, no good mother can ever be too busy to tell her 
children about Jesus, about the supremely important things that con- 
cern the life and eternal destiny of the children for whom she labors and 
cares. 

Oh, what an opportunity lost, when a child’s heart is hungrily open 
for a mother’s teaching, and she turns the child away! How many 
there are who forego their sacred privilege and neglect their most pre- 
cious opportunities for service? — Selected. 


448 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


Reliability (1017). 

“One cold morning in February we stood looking out upon a world 
encased in an icy armor which sparkled with unrivaled beauty in the 
sunshine. ‘Beautiful!’ said one. ‘Yes, it is very beautiful, but it will 
all be gone before noon.’ The little restless maiden, quiet for once as 
she gazed upon the glory, looked up and brightly said: ‘Never mind. 
There’ll be something else beautiful tomorrow.’ The Lord who hath 
done great things for us, whereof we are glad, is doing, and will con- 
tinue to do, great things for us, whereof we shall be glad. ‘Jesus Christ 
is the same yesterday and today, yea and for ever.’” — Record of Chris- 
tian Work. 


Peace Amid Tumult (1018). 

The olive leaf is bitter but it is a sign of peace. However much 
the deluge may welter around us, that holy, heavenly dove of peace is 
ready to descend into our hearts and rest therein; and if the plucked 
leaf which she bears to us from God in heaven seems bitter to us, yet 
none the less it is a leaf of the tree of life, a green leaf from that tree 
whose leaves are for the healing of the nations. — F. W. Farrar. 


Flee From Death (1019). — Senor Castelar was once strongly opposed 
to the death penalty in the army, but later in his life he urged it, be- 
cause, he said, “The soldier would not face death unless certain death 
were behind him if he recoiled.” 


Loving Words Unuttered (1020). 

You remember how Tom Brown was off on a fishing excursion when 
he heard of the death of his old school master, Arnold of Rugby, how 
he started back at once and sat down alone in the chapel where the 
Doctor had already been buried under the altar, and how he turned to 
the pulpit and leaning forward with his head in his hands, groaned 
aloud. “If he could only have seen the doctor again for one five min- 
utes; have told him all that was in his heart, what he owed to him, how 
he loved and reverenced him, and would by God’s help follow his steps 
in life and death, he could have borne it all without a murmur. But 
that he should have gone away forever without knowing it all, was too 
much to bear.” 

Such sorrow as Tom Brown’s has been the portion of countless 
mourners throughout the ages. What kind words are said of the dead, 
and how often his friends say, “If he only could have known how others 
regarded him!” “Oh, the 'anguish of the thought,” writes George Eliot, 
“that we can never atone to our dead for the stinted affection we gave 
them, for the little reverence we showed to that sacred human soul 
that lived so close to us, and was the divinest thing God had given us 
to kuow.” Anguish was Mary of Bethany’s portion when her Lord was 
crucified, but there was no bitter self-reproach mingled with it. She 
had shown Him her love, she had anointed Him while living. — Tarbell. 


GENERAL REFLECTIONS ON LIFE AND DEATH 


4-49i 


The Riper Life (1021). 

As year by year we grow older, from childhood into youth, from 
youth into manhood, then on into middle age, we lind the other spiritual 
world growing ever larger. The circle of human forms that live around 
us lessens in number, but the memories that constitute this other world 
fasten themselves upon us and cling with an undying hold. By every 
lasting separation, with every new and final good-by, we are just so much 
more enriched within ourselves. Our life is no longer merely what we 
see around us; it consists not simply of the friends we meet, whose 
hands we shake, whose voices we hear, whose homes we share; for there 
is ever growing this other and larger sphere within. Nature on the 
outside does not change. The sunlight continues the same, the sky is 
a blue overhead, the grass may be just as green, or the snow be just as 
white and pure; and yet for us it is not the same. When we were 
young we lived in this blue sky and sunlight and snowfall and raindrop; 
it was all the life we had. Now, as we grow and ripen, we have so much 
more life within, so many other lives are added to our own that nature 
and its beauties fall into the background, and the world for us seems to 
be, above everything else, a world of souls. It is like an invisible host 
of feelings and memories that are to us for a possession everlasting. — 
Walter L. Sheldon. 

Life's Best Prize. (1022) — Far away the best prize that life offers is 
the chance to work at work worth doing. — Theodore Roosevelt. 

The New Morning (1023). 

O that our new-born piety every morning might match with our 
new-born “mercies!” O that we could perceive, each morning, all the 
dear faces that meet us — the familiar affections, and all that nature 
paints, and all the happiness which bestrews our path — and all God’s 
forgiveness, and all God’s favors, and promises, and God’s presence — 
as “new” things, to be taken, to be studied, to be admired, to be echoed 
back in praises and homage — just as a star new created! A creation! 
a creation for me! We shall best take our reflection of God, and be 
like Him, if we are always trying to go on, every day, to some “new” 
thing; some “new” attainment in the divine life; some “new” work done, 
and dedicated to Him; each “new” morning finding its echo in a “new” 
trait of holiness! And O, what a standard we should set! to what heights 
we should reach, before the year is over. — J. Vaughan. 

The Gift of Life (1024). 

Life is beautiful. Life is welcome. The spring is welcome because 
it comes bringing life. The fields rejoice, the trees of the wood clap their 
hands, and all nature sings. Welcome spring! Welcome life! When 
children look into the nest of a little bird and see the shell broken and 
the young bird bursting its sepulcher and coming forth alive, they leap 
for joy. When one who has been almost drowned is resuscitated and 
begins to breathe, there is joy and gladness. When the father takes 


450 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


his little child in his arms and realizes that she is his own living child, 
his heart throbs with joy. There is not gold enough in all the world to 
pay for the life of that little child. — Selected. 

Make Friend of Trials. (1025) — Make friends with your trials, as 
though you were always to live together, and you will find that when 
you cease to take thought for your own deliverance, God will take 
thought for you. — Francis de Sales. 

Sovereign Power. (1026) — Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control 
— these three alone lead life to sovereign power. — Tennyson. 

A Noble Career (1027). 

Here is a possible career for every one. Demonstrate the truth in 
your own living. 

It will cost something. Again and again it will confront you with 
the hard choice between worldly prosperity and Christ’s approval; be- 
tween earthly ease and comfort and adherence to the right. But it’s a 
noble choice if you choose the better part. 

Anyone can pursue this career. All that it requires is a talent for 
fidelity. “Let him who will be ‘great,’ do thou be noble.” Whatever 
other qualifications you may lack, you possess those requisite for this 
course. 


“If you cannot write the story you can live it; 

If you may not make the music, be the song; 

If you cannot paint the picture you can give it. 

Heart and soul the glowing canvas for the throng. 

Sightless eyes shall see the colors in your action, 

Ears grown deaf shall hear the anthem in your deed. 

Hearts unlearned shall find and count the holy pages, 

And the record of a life of beauty read.” 

No, it’s not an easy path to tread. But they that w*ear soft raiment 
dwell in king’s houses, and you are a soldier on the battle line; a toiler 
amid the tempest! And when the warfare is ended, when at last the 
tempest lulls, there’s a crown, a port, a haven, and everlasting guerdon. 
And what does a little buffeting here amount to compared with what 
awaits those, who simply live the truth here, over there. — B. 

The Deeds We Do (1028). 

There are few who would be willing to be judged by the acts of their 
daily life, the manner of dealing with others, and the results that so often 
follow. We have a comfortable way of excusing ourselves for our mis- 
takes and even for clearly defined injustice, as well as for our careless 
indifference to the plainest of duty calls, when something else seems more 
attractive — by offering “the will for the deed,” declaring that w r e “meant 
well.” We got sidetracked, that was all, and therefore those whom -we 
have wronged, by what we have done, or left undone, have no real cause 
for a complaint. 


GENERAL REFLECTIONS ON LIFE AND DEATH 


451 


Life would be an easy problem, were it so adjusted that days and 
hours filled with questionable deeds, with unworthy acts, which must 
react in injury to all concerned, could be atoned for by a weak declara- 
tion of a weaker remorse, and an assurance that our “intent” so pitifully 
worthless it failed to control our deeds should still figure great enough 
in God’s sight to blot out the result of the loss sustained. 

Even the sublime patience of the Master was strained by the profes- 
sions, that meant so little, w'hen the test was made of the real worth of 
those professions. “Why call ye me Lord, Lord, and do not the things 
I say?” He was taking into account their daily living, the things they 
did not, the things they claimed to believe. Words are but a painful 
mockery when they are not set as jewels in the deed that proves their 
worth. Broken promises hurt more because of the fact that someone 
knew how glad their fulfillment would make us, and promise only to go 
away and forget to be true to a careless vow too lightly made to keep 
its place in the memory. Something precious dies with the touch of an 
inexcusable neglect to do the promised “deed” of love, simply because 
it proved of too little importance to make itself felt at the right time. 

When we have done battle with the insistent pain that follows in the 
wake of meaningless words, we can understand something of how the 
Master felt when those who cried one day, “Hosanna in the highest,” so 
soon forgot, and cried “Crucify Him.” They had called Him “Lord and 
Master” until it served them better to forget their promises of allegiance. 
And they were judged by what they did, not by what they had pretended 
to be. 

If it be true that the foundation of our faith is laid in the acts of our 
everyday life, then surely if our words are to be considered, they must 
be the forerunners of our deeds, or they are meaningless. Let us be 
honest with God, honest with each other in “word and deed,” remember- 
ing it is better to give the smaller pain of a refusal to do the things we 
care too little for, to hold them too sacred to be forgotten, than to give 
the far greater one of a disappointment to a love that trusted and believed 
beyond the mere words in which we clothed our promise. 

“The faith we hold is built on deeds we do, 

As lofty temples rest on solid ground, 

As through the earth-roots the flower is glory-crowned, 

And when our life is high, our creed is too.” 

— Burlington Hawkeye. 


Deeds Become Character (1029). 

Transient deeds consolidate into permanent character. Beds of sand- 
stone rock, thousands of feet thick, are the sediment dropped from van- 
ished seas, or borne down by long-dried-up rivers. The actions which 
we so often unthinkingly perform, whatever may be the width and the 
permanency of their effects external to us, react upon ourselves, and 
tend to make our permanent bent or twist or character. The chalk cliffs 
at Dover are the skeletons of millions upon millions of tiny organisms. 


452 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


and our little lives are built up by the recurrence of transient deeds, 
which leave their permanent marks upon us. They make character, and 
character determines position yonder. 

As said the apostle, with tender sparingness, and yet with profound 
truth, “he went to his own place,” wherever that was. The surround- 
ings that he was fitted for came about him, and the company that he 
was fit for associated themselves with him. So, in another part of this 
book, where the same solemn expression, “the second death,” is employed, 
we read, “These shall have their part in . . . the second death,” the lot 
that belongs to them. Character and conduct determine position. 

However small the lives here, they settle the far greater ones here- 
after, just as a tiny wheel in a machine may, by cogs and other mechan- 
ical devices, transmit its motion to another wheel at a distance many 
times its diameter. You move this end of a lever through an arc of an 
inch, and the other end will move through an arc of yards. The little 
life here determines the sweep of the great one that is lived yonder. 
The victor wears his past conduct and character, if I may say so, as a 
fireproof garment; and, if he entered the very furnace, heated seven 
times hotter than before, there would be no smell of fire upon him. “He 
that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death.” — Alexander 
Maclaren. 

The Loom of Life. (1030) — We sleep, but the loom of life never 
stops; and the pattern which was weaving when the sun went down is 
weaving when it comes up tomorrow. — Beecher. 

All Seeds Germinate. (1031) — Sow the seeds of life — humbleness, 
pure-heartedness, love; and in the long eternity which lies before the 
soul every minutest grain will come up again with an increase of thirty, 
sixty, or an hundredfold. — Rev. F. W. Robertson. 

It is a glorious thing just to be alive. But ah! how much more 
glorious it is when we know that the life in which we rejoice will go 
on and not die; that when this house of clay, beautifully and wonderfully 
made, shall have been taken down; when it shall have become too fragile 
and weather-beaten by the storms of earth to hold us any more, we 
shall not be cast out to perish, but shall simply move on into seme better 
and roomier house which the Eternal Love that holds us fast has pro- 
vided for us! It is sweet and good to live, but how much sweeter and 
better when we know that what we call death will be merely a letting go 
of what which we can no longer hold, a casting off of that which can no 
longer serve us; a going out from that which is but a prison door, and 
when everything that is mortal about us will be swallowed up in the 
more abundant life! — David H. Greer. 

Teach Me to Live (1032). 

Instead therefore of calling the long time of weariness a “lingering 
here,” we might better call it, as Job did, “a patient waiting all the days 
of our appointed time till our change come.” If patience is to “have its 


GENERAL REFLECTIONS ON LIFE AND DEATH 453 

perfect work that we may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing,” we 
must let God take His own time as well as His own way for bringing the 
great release. 

Teach me to live! ’tis easier far to die, 

Gently and silently to pass away; 

On earth’s long night to close the heavy eye, 

And waken in the realm of glorious day. 

Teach me that harder lesson, how to live 
And serve Thee in the darkest paths of life; 

Arm me to conflict, strength and patience give, 

And make me more than conqueror in the strife. 

— Voices of Comfort. 

A Crowned Soul (1033). 

Any one that sets out in this life for the purpose of being happy will 
have a pretty tough time of it. There is not happiness to go round, and 
the kind of which there is enough is not worth having. No one can 
ever be built up into a crowned soul by being favored with happiness. 
But when you go in for the best things, the fundamental things, and keep 
on doing so, somehow or other you will be likely to have a good deal 
of trouble and pain, but it will be pain which will have something divine 
in it, and something you would not exchange for any so-called happiness 
under the sun. 

We are going to be through with this life before very long. The long- 
est life is short when it is over; any time is short when it is done. The 
gates of time will swing to behind you before very long. They will swing 
to behind some of us soon, but behind all of us before very long. And 
then the important thing will not be what appointments we had, or what 
rank in the conference, or anything of that sort; not what men thought 
of us, and whether we were built into His kingdom. And if, at the end 
of it all, we emerge from life’s work and discipline crowned souls, at 
home anywhere in God’s universe, life will be a success. — Selec' 

Life’s Conflict (1034). 

Life is meant to be one long conflict. The condition under which we 
work in this world is that everything worth while has to be done at the 
cost of opposition and antagonism, and that no noble service or building 
is possible without brave, continuous conflict. Even upon the lower 
levels of life that is so. No man learns a science or a trade without 
having to fight for it. But high above these lower levels there is the 
one on which we are called to walk, the high level of duty, and no man 
does what his conscience tells him or refrains from that which his con- 
science sternly forbids without having to fight for it. We are in the lists 
and compelled to draw the sword, and if we do not realize this, that all 
nobility, all greatness, all wisdom, all success, even of the lowest and 
most vulpine kind, are won by conflict, we shall never struggle for lower 
purposes, for bread and cheese, or wealth or fame, or love, or the like, 
with a comparatively light heart; but if there once has dawned upon a 


iZi 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


young soul the whole majestic sweep of possibilities in its opening life, 
then the battle assumes an aspect of solemnity and greatness that 
silences all boasting. 

There is no room for boasting, but there is room for absolute confi- 
dence. You, young men and women, standing at the entrance of the 
amphitheatre where the gladiators fight, may dash into the arena with 
the most perfect confidence that you will come out with your shield pre- 
served and your sword unbroken. 

There is one way of doing it. “Be of good cheer! I have overcome 
the world.” That is not the boast of a man putting on the harness, but 
the calm utterance of the conquering Christ when He was putting it off. 
He has conquered that you may conquer. Distrust yourselves utterly, 
and trust Jesus Christ absolutely, and give yourselves to Him, to be His 
servants and soldiers till your lives’ end. He was no self-righteous brag- 
gart, but a very rigid judge of himself, who, close by the headsman’s 
block that ended his life, said: “I have fought a good fight; I have finished 
my Qourse; I have kept the faith.” “Put on the whole armor of God,” 
and when the time comes to put it off, you will have a peaceful assurance 
as far removed from despair as it is from boasting. — Alexander Maclaren. 

Life’s Meanings (1035). 

Who knows all the meaning of his own word? Who can explain 
all the issue and ultimate relationship of the simplest things w T hich he 
does, in the church or in the harvest field, or in any sphere of life? We 
know not what part we are taking in the building up of God’s fabric. 
Sometimes when we little suppose we are doing anything at all towards 
building the temple of God, we are working most industriously in that 
direction . . . Sometimes life’s monotony wearies us. . . . Let us look back 
into history that our cheerfulness may be revived. Men do not know . . . 
The barley harvest may be as a sacrament, the open field an unroofed, 
church, the gracious words spoken to strangers may come back again in 
prophecy and its sublimest fulfillment. — Joseph Parker. 

Thank God for Work (1037). 

Thank God every morning when you get up that you have something 
to do that day which must be done whether you like it or not. Being 
forced to w r ork and forced to do your best will breed in you temperance, 
self-control, diligence, strength of will, content and a hundred virtues 
which the idle will never know. — Charles Kingsley. 

Tangled Webs (1038). 

The want which w r e vainly proposed to relieve, soon looks <up at us 
with reproachful face from the still graves. The tears we failed to wipe 
away, dry upon the cheek, and leave us in the presence of the averted 
features cf distrust, instead of the eye of sweet reliance. The just expec- 
tation which we have disappointed cannot be recovered; there must be 
a long undoing, before you can weave again, in even lines and pattern 
fair, the tangled web of life. — James Martineau. 


GENERAL REFLECTIONS ON LIFE AND DEATH 


455 


ILLUSTRATIVE POETRY. 

My Guide (1039). 

There is no path in this desert waste; 

For the winds have swept the shifting sands. 

The trail is blind where the storms have raced, 

And a stranger, I, in these fearsome lands. 

But I journey on with a lightsome tread; 

I do not falter nor turn aside, 

For I see His figure just ahead — 

He knows the way — my Guide. 

There is no path in this trackless sea; 

No map is lined on the restless waves; 

The ocean snares are strange to me 
Where the unseen wind in its fury raves. 

But it matters naught; my sails are set. 

And my swift prow tosses the seas aside. 

For the changeless stars are steadfast yet, 

And I sail by His star-blazed trail — my Guide. 

There is no way in this starless night; 

There is naught but cloud in the inky skies; 

The black night smothers me, left and right, 

I stare with a blind man’s straining eyes. 

But my steps are firm, for I cannot stray; 

The path to my feet seems light and wide; 

For I hear His voice — “I am the Way!” 

And I sing as I follow Him on — my Guide. 

— Robert J. Burdette. 


Day by Day (1040). 

If thou but diest day by day 
To sins that clog thy homeward way, 

Each night shall be a grave of care, 

And morn a resurrection fair. 

And daily be thy strength restored 
By the dear Presence of thy Lord. 

— Author unknown. 


Separation Transient (1041). 

When the weary ones we love 
Enter on their rest above, 

When the words of love and cheer 
Fall no longer on our ear, 

Hush! be every murmur dumb! 

It is only “Till He come.” 


— Bickersteth. 


456 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


The Years (1042). 

Sunrise, and noon, and sunset. 

And day slips into day; 

Twilight, and dark, and daylight — 

The years have rolled away. 

Days that have brought their honors. 

And days that left their scars — 

Over it all the marvel 
Of each night with its stars. 

Sunrise, and noon, and sunset. 

Day will slip into day; 

Twilight, and dark, and daylight, 

The years will roll away; 

Sunshine, and song, and gladness, 

Fair dreams that come in sleep, 

Bird song, and nodding blossoms — 

These are we fain to keep. 

Darkness, and light, and shadows, 

Sorrow, and golden cheer. 

Blend into God’s completeness, 

Into the finished year. 

Into a memory fabric 
Woven of shade and shine — 

These are the years unfolding 
In lives like yours and mine. 

—Wilbur D. Nesbit. 

Gems From Browning (1043). 

I am a wanderer! I remember well 

One journey, how I feared the track was missed, 

So long the city I desired to reach 
Lay hid; when suddenly its spires afar 

Flashed through the the circling clouds. You may conceive 
My transport; soon the vapors closed again, 

But I had seen the city, and one such glance 
No darkness could obscure. 

— From “Paracelsus.” 

Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, 

Or what’s a heaven for? 

Butterflies may dread extinction, you’ll not die, it cannot be! 

From the gift looking to the Giver, 

And from the cistern to the river, 

And from the finite to infinity, 

And from man’s dust to God’s divinity. 


GENERAL REFLECTIONS ON LIFE AND DEATH 457 

Oh world, as God has made it! All is beauty! 

And knowing this is love, and love is duty. 

— From “A Guardian Angel.” 

We are in God’s hand. 

How strange now looks the life He makes us lead; 

So free we seem, so fettered fast we are, 

I feel He laid the fetter! Let it lie. 

— From “Andrea del Sarto.” 

The common problem, yours, mine, every one’s, 

Is not to fancy what were fair in life 
Provided it could be, but, finding first 
What may be, then, find how to make it fair 
Up to our means, a very different thing! 

My business is not to remake myself, 

But make the absolute best of what God made. 

The Soul’s Sunrise (1044) 

Our lives have oft been darkened by the shadows of the years. 

Our eyes ofttiines been blinded with a brimming flood of tears. 

Anguish wrung the hearts within us with its iron grip of care, 

And the loads ’neath which we staggered, our souls were loath to bear. 

Life’s ways stretched on before us under skies with storms o’ercast; 

And our frail bark was driven hard before the bitter blast. 

We have loved — and lost our loved ones. We reaped earth’s golden field 
But to have time’s raging torrents sweep off the garnered yield. 

We saw the sun in splendor to its flaming zenith rise; 

To meet with sombre setting, and to walk ’neath leaden skies. 

Often hope has died within us; and faith been slain by fear, 

And life’s dull and wintry landscape was overcast and drear. 

And then! Life’s starless darkness was all flooded o’er with light! 

The dawn of an immortal day vanquished the gloom of night. 

From out the riven sepulcher heaven’s radiant sunlight shone. 

Christ conquered death; won endless life, and shares it with His own. 

All hail! blest Easter morning! with thy message bright with cheer. 

All hail! faith’s cloudless dawning breaks, dispelling mists of fear. 
Our hearts now thrill with gladness as before they sank in gloom; 

All the birds are set asinging, and all the flow’rs abloom. 

— L. M. H. 


Ashes (1045). 

These ashes, too, this little dust. 
Our Father’s care shall keep, 
Till the last angel rise and break 
The long and dreary sleep. 


453 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


Then love’s soft dew o’er every eye 
Shall shed its mildest rays. 

And the long-silent dust shall burst 
JVith shouts of endless praise. 

— Selected. 


The Pilgrim Soul (1046). 

“March on, my soul, nor like a laggard stay! 

March swiftly on. Yet err not from the way 
Where all the nobly wise of old have trod — 

The path of faith made by the sons of God. 

“Something to learn, and something to forget: 

Hold fast the good, and seek the better yet; 

Press on, and prove the pilgrim hope of youth — 

That creeds are milestones on the road to truth.” 

— Henry van Dyke. 

The Good Shepherd (1047). 

(From the Spanish of Lope de Vega.) 

Shepherd! that with thine amorous, sylvan song 
Hast broken the slumber which encompassed me, — 

That mad’st Thy crook from the accursed tree. 

On which Thy powerful arms were stretched so long! 

Lead me to mercy’s ever-flowing fountains; 

For Thou my shepherd, guard and guide shalt be; 

I will obey Thy voice, and wait to see 
Thy feet all beautiful upon the mountains. 

Hear, Shepherd! — Thou who for Thy flock art dying, 

O, wash away these scarlet sins, for Tho” 

Rejoicest at the contrite sinner’s vow. 

O, wait! — to Thee my weary soul is crying, — 

Wait for me! — Yet why ask it, when I see, 

With feet nailed to the cross, Thou’rt waiting still for me! 

— Henry W. Longfellow. 

Responsibility (1050). 

God has crammed both thy palms with living seed; 

Let not a miser’s clutch keep both hands tight 
But scatter on the desert’s barren need 
That fragrant blossoms may reward God’s sight. 

God has dipped deep thy cup into His spring, 

Which drippeth over, it is so well filled; 

Lend it to some parched life, and let it bring 
Laughter and song to voices drought has stilled. 

God gave to thee His only well-loved Christ, 

Whose steps have smoothed the road that leads thee home, 
Tell those whose road is rough, whose way is missed, 

That He has called all weary ones to come. 


GENERAL REFLECTIONS ON LIFE AND DEATH 


459 [ 


So shall thy giving set for thee God’s smile, 

And thine own soul drink deep draughts of His love; 
Eartn’s shadows shall grow bright as heaven, the while 
A web of glory round thy life is wove. 

— British Congregationalist. 

Work (1051). 

No man is born into the world whose work 
Is not born with him; there is always work 
And tools to work withal, for those who will; 

And blessed are the horny hands of toil! 

— Lowell. 

Builders (1052). 

We are building every day. 

In a good or evil way. 

And the structure, as it grows. 

Will our inmost self disclose. 

Till in every arch and line 
All our faults and failings shine; 

It may grow a castle grand, 

Or a wreck upon the sand. 

Build it well, whate’er you do; 

Build it straight, and strong, and true; 

Build it clean, and high, and broad; 

Build it for the eye of God! 

— I. E. Diekenga. 


What Does It Matter? (1053). 

It matters little where I was born, 

Or if my parents were rich or poor; 

Whether they shrank at the cold world’s scorn, 
Or walked in the pride of wealth secure. 

But whether I live an honest man, 

And hold my integrity firm in my clutch, 

I tell you, brother, as plain as I can, 

It matters much. 

It matters little how long I stay 
In a world of sorrow, sin and care; 

Whether in youth I am called away. 

Or live till my bones and pate are bare. 

But whether I do the best I can 
To soften the weight of adversity’s touch 

On the fading cheek of my fellow men, 

It matters much. 


460 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


It matters little where be my grave. 

Or on the land or in the sea, 

By purling brook or ’neath stormy wave, 

It matters little or naught to me 
But whether the Angel Death comes down 
And marks my brow with his loving touch 
As one that shall wear the victor’s crown, 

It matters much. 


— Noah Barker. 


A Scotch Epitaph. 

Our life is but a winter’s day. 
Some only breakfast, and away; 
Others to dinner stay 
And are full-fed; 

The oldest man but sups 
And goes to bed. 

Long is his debt 
That lingers out the day; 

He that goes soonest 
Has the least to pay. 


GENERAL REFLECTIONS ON LIFE AND DEATH 461 

TEXTS AND TREATMENT HINTS. 

The Illusiveness of Life (1054). 

By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which 
he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not 
knowing whither he went. By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, 
as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, 
the heirs with him of the same promise: for he looked for a city which 
hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God. — Heb. 11:8-10. 

I. The deception of life’s promise. 

II. The meaning of that deception. 

Let it be clearly understood, in the first place, the. promise never 
was fulfilled. I do not say the fulfillment was delayed. I say it never 
was fulfilled. Abraham had a few feet of earth, obtained by purchase, — 
beyond that, nothing; he died a stranger and a pilgrim in the land. 
Isaac had a little. So small was Jacob’s hold upon his country, that the 
last years of his life were spent in Egypt, and he died a foreigner in a 
strange land. His descendants came into the land of Canaan, expecting 
to find it a land flowing with milk and honey; they found hard work to 
do — war and unrest, instead of rest. 

And such is life’s disappointment. Its promise is, you shall have a 
Canaan; it turns out to be a baseless, airy dream — toil and warfare — 
nothing that we can call our own; not the land of rest, by any means. 
But we will examine this in particulars. 

I. Our senses deceive us; we begin life with delusion. Our senses 
deceive us with respect to distance, shape, and color. That which afar 
off seem3 oval turns out to be circular, modified by the perspective of 
distance; that which appears a speck, upon nearer approach becomes a 
vast body. To the earlier ages the stars presented the delusion of small 
lamps hung in space. The beautiful berry proves to be bitter and poison- 
ous; that which apparently moves is really at rest; that which seems to 
be stationary is in perpetual motion: the earth moves — the sun is still. 
All experience is a correction of life’s delusions — a modification, a reversal 
of the judgment of the senses; and all life is a lesson on the falsehood 
of appearances. 

II. Our natural anticipations deceive us — I say natural in contradis- 
tinction to extravagant expectations. 

“Whatsoever a Man Soweth, That Shall He Also Reap.” — Gal. 6:7 (1055). 

All these experiences were undergone by the same man: the perse- 
cutor was persecuted; he who shut up others in prison was shut up in 
prison himself; he who breathed out threatenings and slaughter against 
the saints was himself stoned, beaten with rods, and pursued by the ven- 
geance of furious men. What are we taught by such facts? 

I. That a man’s life comes back upon him. — “Whatsoever a man 
soweth, that shall he also reap.” One feels in reading such experience 
that the sense of justice is satisfied. Suppose that Saul had after his 
conversion settled down into a state of Christian comfort and enjoy- 
ment; in such a case there would have been a want of moral complete- 


462 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 

ness. Paul himself would have been injured. To have allowed him to 
wash the blood of the saints off his hands, and to enter upon a course 
of personal luxury would have been to demoralize human nature. He 
must reap what he himself had sown! Such is the severe but beneficent 
law! This law keeps things equal. If any man could mingle bitter cups 
for others, and never be compelled to drain their dregs himself, he would 
soon become a devil. God shows him that his turn is coming. Every 
blow he strikes will be re-delivered upon himself; every pain he inflicts 
upon others will sting his own heart: every harsh word will come back 
to torment him. 

II. That a man’s Christian experience must be affected by the un- 
Christian life he has lived. — This is the most remarkable thing in connec- 
tion with the subject. One would suppose that after conversion all the 
former life would be done away. Such is not the case. Physically it is 
not so; why should it be so spiritually? The man who has physically 
abused himself will feel the effects of his sin after conversion; old age 
will come upon^him swiftly; his energies will decay before their time; 
his memory will betray him; and even trivial difficulties will fill him with 
dismay. 

In reviewing these statements in the light of history and revelation 
we see: 

First — That the distribution of penalties is God’s work, and not man’s. 
“Vengeance is mine,” etc. 

Second — That under all the apparent confusion of human life there is 
a principle of justice. 

Third — That the greatest sufferings may be borne with patience and 
hopefulness. When did Paul complain of his lot? When did he say that 
he had suffered more than his share? From him let us learn “how good 
a thing it is to suffer and be strong.” — Joseph Parker, D. D. 

(1065.) — But ye, beloved, building up yourself on your most holy 
faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, 
looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. — Jude 
20 : 21 . 

I. Life is a building contract. 

II. We are co-builders with God. 

III. We are building for Eternity. 

IV. Build well! 

“No Man Liveth to Himself” Rev. 14:7 (1056). 

I. Look at the text as it is interpreted for us by the section of the 
Epistle to the Romans in which it is found. That section is devoted to 
an elucidation of the principles by which the early Christians were 
to be guided as to their observance or nonobservance of particular fes- 
tival days and as to their abstinence or nonabstinence from certain 
kinds of meats and drinks. “None of us,” says the Apostle, “liveth to 
himself.” However it may be with others, none of us Christians liveth 
unto himself. Each of us has accepted Christ as his Redeemer and Lord 
and is seeking in all things to serve Him, so if one eateth unto the 


GENERAL REFLECTIONS ON LIFE AND DEATH 


463 


Lord, and if another eateth not, he eateth not unto the Lord. Because 
we are seeking to live to Christ, there is, in reference to all matters 
indifferent, perfect liberty to the individual conscience, and no one has 
a right to judge or set at nought another for doing that of which he is 
fully persuaded in his own mind, and which he is seeking to do as unto 
the Lord. Not our own pleasure, but rather the glory of Christ and the 
edification and peace and progress of the brotherhood, is to be made the 
rule of our lives. 

II. Consider the text as an inevitable condition of human evistence. 
No man’s life terminates on himself alone, but each of us exerts an 
influence through his character and conduct upon all with whom he 
comes in contact. Make haste, then, and see whether the effect of 
your life on others is good or evil; and if evil, seek for goodness and 
renewal at the hand of Christ. 

III. Read the text as it expresses the deliberate purpose of every 
genuine Christian. The true believer forswears self. From the moment 
of his conversion his whole being runs Christward. The volume of the 
river may be small at first, but, small as it is, its direction is decided, 
and it gathers magnitude as it flows, for it drains the valley of his 
life. He keeps himself for Christ, because he owes everything to Christ. 
— W. M. Taylor, D. D. 

Our Use of the Materials (1057). 

A well known modern artist, having visited Italy last winter, was 
asked which of the great masterpieces of art he had seen there im- 
pressed him most. He answered, “Fra Angelico’s painted slab. It 
proved the sincerity of his devotion to art. The man who could paini 
angels was as faithful and zealous when it became his duty to paint a 
stone, as though his subject had been one of transcendent merit.” 

The power of a great artist is proved, not by the size or loftiness 
of his subject, but by the way he treats it, however small it may be. 
Giotto showed more skill in drawing a single letter than many painters 
have displayed upon huge, crowded canvasses. 

God puts materials into the hands of every human being for one great 
work, and that is the highest development of His own life. Each of us 
would like to make life illustrious in deeds that declare their importance 
to men, but the materials with which we have to do seem meager and 
mean. A dull brain, inherited disease, vulgar surroundings, what, we 
think, can the longing soul do with these? It may be that the dull stone 
is given to us to paint, not the face of an archangel. 

God will not blame us for the materials which He Himself has given. 
He will take account only of the way they are used. It was the Great 
Teacher who declared that it was He who had been faithful over a few 
things who was made ruler over many things. — Youth’s Companion. 

Life (1058). 

Every human life is a fresh one, bright with hopes that will never 
be realized. There may be differences of character in these hopes; finer 
spirits may look on life as the arena of successful deeds, the more selfish 
as a place of personal enjoyment. 


464 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


With man the turning point of life may be a profession — with 
woman, marriage; the one gilding the future with the triumphs of intel- 
lect, the other with the dreams of affection; but, in every case, life is 
not what any of them expects, but something else, 

) 3. Our expectations, resting on revelation, deceive us. The world’s 

history has turned round two points of hope; one, the first — the other, 
the second coming of the Messiah. The magnificent imagery of Hebrew 
prophecy had described the advent of the Conqueror; He came — “a root 
'out of a dry ground, with no form or comeliness; and when they saw 
‘.Him there was no beauty in Him that they should desire Him.” 

II. The second inquiry, therefore, is the meaning of this delusive- 
ness. 

1. It serves to allure us on. Suppose that a spiritual promise had 
been made at first to Israel; imagine that they had been informed at 
the outset that God’s rest is inward; that the promised land is only found 
in the Jerusalem which is above — not material, but immaterial; that 
rude, gross people, yearning after the fleshpots of Egypt — willing to go 
back into slavery, so as only they might have enough to eat and drink 
— would they have quitted Egypt on such terms? Would they have 
begun one single step of that pilgrimage, which was to find its meaning 
in the discipline of ages? 

2. This non-fulfillment of promise fulfills it in a deeper way. The 
account we have given already, were it to end there, would be insufficient 
to excuse the failure of life’s promise; by saying that it allures us, 
would be really to charge God with deception. Now, life is not decep- 
tion, but illusion. We distinguish between illusion and delusion. We 
may paint wood so as to be taken for stone, iron, or marble — this is 
delusion; but you may paint a picture, in which rocks, trees, and sky, 
are never mistaken for what they seem, yet produce all the emotion which 
real rocks, trees, and sky, would produce. This is illusion, and this Is the 
painter’s art; never for one moment to deceive by attempted imitation, 
but to produce a mental state in which the feelings are suggested which 
the natural objects themselves would create. — Frederick W. Robertson. 

“Every Man That Hath This Hope Purifieth Himself.” — 1 John 3:3 

(1059). 

Performance must not make a mock of possibility. 

Here faith is ours, and heavenly hope. 

And grace to lead us higher, 

And there are perfectness and peace, 

Beyond our best desire. 

Oh, by Thy love and anguish, Lord, 

Oh, by Thy life laid down. 

Grant that we fall not from this grace, 

Nor cast away our crown. 

This word of the apostle brings a wind from the high places of God 
and Eternity to cleanse and freshen into health our common life. Do you 
remember Shelley’s cry to the west wind that swept his island home? 


GENERAL REFLECTIONS ON LIFE AND DEATH 


465 


He felt there was life in it, and, perhaps, life for him; he saw how it 
sent the swift clouds before it, tipped the sea waves with silver, lifted 
even the dead leaves into semblance of life, and he longed to share the 
impulse of its strength. 

Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud! 

I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed! 

A heavy weight of hours hath chained and bowed 

One too like thee, tameless and swift and proud. 

What he needed was not the wild west wind, but the Spirit of God 
to sweep over his w r ondrous faculties; and, wizard of song as he was, 
what mightier music the world might have had! And what we need 
also to touch our powers to finer endeavors, and our lives to nobler 
issues, is the free play upon our spirits of the wind from the hills of 
God; “the powers of the world to come.” — “Sculptors of Life.” 

“Seek Those Things Which Are Above.” — Col. 3:1 (1060). 

The call that comes to us today is more imperious and immediate. 
This mortal must put on immortality. Life and character and all that 
makes life worth having are not a gift, but a conquest and an achieve- 
ment. “If ye are risen with Christ, seek the things that are above where 
Christ is” — not above in the heavens, which no hand has yet charted, 
but above in the timeless relations of the ideal life where we may always 
look for him, however high we ascend. 

This mortal must put on immortality — not as when one changes the 
soiled working-garb for holiday dress, but rather as when one gears the 
machinery of his present task into the wheels of eternity. Do not think 
that you can get through these transient earthly things, and put them out 
of sight, and be done with them. Rather must the habits, the character- 
istics, the hopes of yesterday, be carried forward into the work of tomor- 
row. So that what we need, is to acquire the thoroughness, the com- 
posure, the self-restraint, the perspective which shall help us do the 
work of tomorrow, whether that tomorrow find us working there or here. 
— Selected. 

“Therefore, My Beloved Brethren, Be Ye Stedfast, Unmoveable.”— 

1 Cor. 15:58 (1061). 

I. The duty which is connected with our being steadfast and unmov- 
able in the faith of the resurrection, and of the resurrection life, is (1) 
to be about the work of the Lord; (2) to abound in it; (3) to abound in 
it always. 

II. The motive — your labor is not in vain. It is in the Lord that 
your Tabor is not in vain — empty, or void of result and issue. You enter 
into the work of the Lord as the Lord Himself entered into the work 
given Him to do. It belongs to Him to see that your labor in His work 
shall not be in vain. His labor is not in vain, (1) because He has gone, in 
that very body, the same man precisely that He was on earth, the same 
man complete, to present Himself before the Father whose will He 
has done and whose work He has finished, saying, “Behold, I and the chil- 


466 


THOUGHTS FOR MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 


dren whom Thou hast given Me.” He asks sentence to be passed on Him- 
self in that body, and on what He has done and suffered in that body. 
He asks for a judicial award. The mere bettering of His condition, as a 
natural consequence and gracious owning of His past and forgotten his- 
tory, will not suffice. He asks for a verdict on that history, as a history 
not buried in oblivion’s indulgent tomb, but raised for righteous judg- 
ment. (2) And then, secondly, His labor is not in vain, since not only in 
His risen body does He challenge judgment on Himself and His work, 
but with that same risen body, He takes the work up and follows it out. 
He carries on in heaven the work which He had on hand on earth. He 
resumes it that He may carry it out to its endless issues of blessedness 
and glory in the new heavens and the new earth, wherein dwelleth 
righteousness. And as the Lord’s own labor in the work is thus 
not in vain, so yours is not in vain in Him; and that for the same two- 
fold reason. — “Life in a Risen Saviour.” 

“So Teach Us to Number Our Days.”— Ps. 90:12 (1062). 

A young man decides on a professional career in life. Compared 
with its anticipated duration, his days of preparation are comparatively 
few. He numbers them easily enough; three years in fitting for college, 
four years in college, and three in the professional school. Allowing 
forty weeks of study to the year, on the use made of these four hundred 
weeks depends the good or the ill success of his whole life. The “wise” 
student counts carefully the weeks of each passing term, not because 
they are so many, but because they are so few; so almost nothing, indeed, 
compared with the many decades which he means to fill with useful and 
honorable work in the world. Gladstone is reported as having once 
punctuated the difference between the student who thus thoughtfully 
numbers his college days and one who lets them slip by carelessly unim- 
proved, by saying, “One-third of our Oxford and Cambridge men come 
only because they are sent; one-third come with no other idea than that 
of having a good time. The other third rules England!” 

If it be worth while asking, “Where and how shall I spend these few, 
fleeting days of my earthly life?” how vastly more to the purpose must 
it be to ask, “Where and how shall I spend my eternity?” It is a short 
problem to reduce the traditional “three-score years and ten” to the 
twenty-five thousand five hundred and fifty days of which they are com- 
posed. True, they do seem so definite, to be a large sum. But the point 
to be considered is that it is, after all, a sum — a sum-total. Each day 
spent takes one from the number and brings us that much nearer the 
end. What, then, of even the longest lived of the antediluvian patri- 
archs? What of Methuselah, himself? Were we, too, to be multi-centen- 
arians, how surely would come the hour when, looking back, we would be 
compelled to ask, “For what is our life?” and to answer, “Verily it is 
but a vapor which appeareth but a little while and then vanisheth away. 
— Ballard. 


GENERAL REFLECTIONS ON LIFE AND DEATH 


467 


“Seek Ye First the Kingdom of God, and His Righteousness; and All 
These Things Shall Be Added Unto You.” — Matt. 6:33 (1063). 

Get at God’s purposes. Grasp His character. Accept His command- 
ments. Come to Him and know Him. That is the purpose of life. 

It is a man’s work. It is worth the doing. Many men are saying 
today, “Give us a man’s work.” They find the organization of life too 
intricate; its details, as they present themselves, too petty. They long 
for what requires a larger grasp, a more heroic effort, a more prolonged 
and steadier purpose, than they find in the vast majority of appeals that 
come to them for co-operation. Here is the summons that will satisfy 
every need. It is, Live your life! Recognize its meaning. Understand 
that it is to know God; to so find Him, and believe in Him, and live for 
Him, that all your life shall be drawn into that purpose and controlled 
by it for good. 

One says: “My purpose is to cultivate myself. I have a right to 
make the most of my talents and my opportunities.” So far good. The 
talents and the opportunities are God’s good gifts. Life as possessing 
them is to be lived today, for opportunities pass and talents may be 
lost. But is your cultivation of yourself to the end that you may know 
God and serve Him? Otherwise you are wrong. Your life is going astray. 
Another says: “My purpose is to care for my family. That is all I can 
do. To clothe, to house, to feed, to educate them, takes all my strength. 
It is my task. No other will do it.” That is well. There is no better 
task for you. But is it that you may fit them for God; to lift them to 
the plane of life in which they shall know him and be fitted for His 
service? Are you giving them the equipment with which they shall be 
children of God in a larger and truer sense, if God will, then you have 
been yourself? Another says: “My purpose is to do good, to help men.” 
That is well. But why are you doing it? Is your devotion to your 
society, or your class, or whatever may be the agency to which you are 
devoting yourself, for your own satisfaction or for your own glory and 
self-praise, or because it is yours and not another’s? Is it that, or are 
you doing it for God to promote His kingdom and make known His love? 
If so, you will be humble and patient, and considerate of others, and 
self-sacrificing. You w T ill find your reward and your joy in the kindness 
of your own heart as at the close of the day you shut yourself up alone 
with God to thank Him for the privilege of rendering one more day’s 
service. Here is the real purpose of life. The man who holds and is 
held by it attains life; and the man who turns from it, surely he loses 
his life. — Stimson. 




SECTION TWO 


I. GENERAL REFLECTIONS ON LIFE 
AND DEATH. 

“AS A TALE THAT IS TOLD.” 

REV. JAS. W. FI FI ELD, D. D. 

“Born of love and hope, of ecstacy and pain, of agony and fear, of 
tears and joy — dowered with the wealth of two united hearts — held in 
happy arms with lips upon life’s drifted fount, blue veined and fair, 
where perfect peace finds perfect form — rocked by willing feet and wooed 
to shadowy shores of sleep by siren mother singing soft and low — look- 
ing with wonders wide and startled eyes at common things of life and 
day — taught by want and wish and contact with the things that touch 
the dimpled flesh of babes — lured by light and flame and charmed by 
colors wondrous robes — learning the use of feet and hands, and by love 
of mimicry guiled to utter speech — releasing prisoned thoughts from 
crabbed and curious marks on soiled and tattered leaves — puzzling the 
brain with crooked numbers and their changing, tangled worth — and so 
through years of alternating day and night, until the captive grows 
familiar with the chains and walls and limitations of life. 

And time runs on in sun and shade, until one of all the world is 
wooed and won, and all the lore of love is taught and learned again. 

Again a home is built with a fair chamber wherein faint dreams, 
like cool and shadowy vales divide the billowed hours of love. Again the 
miracle of birth — the pain and joy, the kiss of welcome and the cradle 
song, drowning the drowsy prattle of a babe. 

And then the sense of obligation and of wrong — pity for those who 
toil and weep, tears for the imprisoned, the despised, love for the gener- 
ous dead, and in the heart the rapture of a high resolve. 

And then ambition, with its lust of pelf and place and power, longing 
to put upon its breast, distinction’s worthless badge. Then keener 
thoughts of men and eyes that see behind the smiling mask of craft- 
flattered no more by the obsequious cringe of gain and greed — knowing 
the usefulness of hoarded gold — of honor bought from those who would 
charge the usury of self-respect — of power that only bends a coward’s 
keens and forces from the lips of fear the lies of praise. Knowing at 
last the unstudied gesture of esteem, the reverend eyes made rich with 
honest thought, and holding high above all other things — high as hope’s 
great throbbing star above the darkness of the dead — the love of wife 
and child and friend. 


470 


FUNERAL SERMONS AND ADDRESSES 


The locks of gray and growing love of other days and half remem- 
bered things — the holding withered hands of those who first held his, 
while over dim and loving eyes death softly presses down the lids to 
rest. And so, locking in marriage-vows his children’s hands and cross- 
ing others on the breasts of peace with daughters’ babes upon his knees, 
and white hair mingling with gold, he journeys on from day to day to 
the horizon where the dusk is waiting for the night — sitting by the cold 
hearth of home, as the last embers change from red to gray, he falls 
asleep within the arms of her he worshiped and adored, feeling upon 
his pallid lips love’s last and holiest kiss.” 

No Death. 

There is no death. The great plague of many lives is unreal and has 
no more substance than the banks of clouds which seem to barricade 
the ongoing of the ship at sea. They hang lowering over the waters and 
lift themselves far into the sky yet they are penetrateable anywhere and 
the long voyage of the deep need not stop because of them. True, the 
passage through the fogs is not like the journey on a sunlit sea, yet 
fog is not rock and beyond their dark outline will be brightness again 
and the happy coast line of home. Now death is not real. It is an 
experience in the career of a life. Yet in it we do not die. It is a time 
of transition. Jesus called it sleep. It has its element of mystery and 
change, yet the body alone feels its power. Man’s soul dies not, but 
goes steadily on through this gloomy experience as it has passed through 
others before. Indeed, instead of death being an hour of death it is an 
hour of life. It is not evening, but morning. We begin to truly live in 
the life beyond this world, in all the largeness and joys of the spirit. 
At death the soul like an imprisoned dove, with the morning in its wings, 
leaves its cage of flesh and enters the fuller, richer life — the life of 
eternal peace and growth and joy. That is, this may be the experience. 
The sting of death is not death. Its sting is sin. And sin is ever self- 
limiting and self-injuring. Let the soul have its true fellowship with 
God; let it be unfolding in all the gracious experiences of life; let it be 
increasing into the beauty of spirit and strength of service which were 
in Christ and when death comes it will be like the breaking of a new 
and happy morning over a landscape and every power will be quickened 
and every joy will be deepened and every moment of the deathless years 
will be full of the presence and gladness of God. — Rev. Jas. W. Fifield, 
D. D. 


THE LIVING DEAD. 

REV. MYRON W. HAYNES, D. D. 

We often speak of our friends who have departed as though they 
were swept out of existence. It is difficult in the hour of grief to con- 
ceive that they have simply changed relations. We say of the sun at 
evening, “It has gone.” Gone where? It has simply faded from our 
vision to shed its light on some other part of the globe. We say of the 
ship that gradually sinks from sight, “It is gone.” Gone where? It is 


GENERAL REFLECTIONS ON LIFE AND DEATH 


471 


just wending its way across pathless waters to find, ere many days, a 
shelter in another harbor. Our friends have gone to find rest in another 
harbor and to shine in another realm. 

It is with something of a shudder that we stand at the grave and 
hear the cold thud of the dirt falling upon the casket. The earth is claim- 
ing our loved one, and the sexton stands monarch of this sepulchral 
realm. Yet our loved one is not being buried, and the sexton’s kingship 
is only imaginary. He cannot bury the memory of our loved one. That 
may abide with us in sweet fragrance forever. He cannot bury the influ- 
ence of our dear ones. Wherever our lives have been touched and our 
characters moulded by the one who has gone, it abides. It is a deathless 
influence. No one can bury it. After all what we really loved and cher- 
ished in our friends is left to us. We did not love the fleshly hand nor 
the face of clay. It was the indefinable something which we cannot 
explain, and which is really with us after all. To the purest and noblest 
love there is no such word as death, and to all that was best and abiding 
in our darling, the grave and the sexton have no claim. — Rev. Myron W. 
Haynes, D. D. 


DEATH AS EXPRESSED IN THREE CHRISTIAN 

PHRASES. 

REV. GEORGE WOLFE SHINN, D. D. 

There are three Christian expressions which come to mind today as 
we meet together at this funeral service. They are descriptive of the 
condition of a departed Christian. They have long been used in the 
Christian church in speaking of those who have reached the end of their 
pilgrimage here. These three expressions are: “Entered into life.” 
“Asleep in Jesus,” and “Forever with the Lord.” 

The first of these, “Entered into Life,” brings vividly before us the 
fact that this is not our true life, or our final life. There is something 
so much greater and so much more significant than the life we now live 
in the flesh that we can speak of entering into life when one departs 
hence in the Lord, in the faith of Christ. There is something beyond the 
present so much more important than the present that what is now is 
scarcely worthy to be compared with it. The present life may be thought 
of as the vestibule of eternity. It is the mere entrance, as the porch is 
to the great temple. It is like the preface to the book which is to con- 
tain many chapters. It is as the prelude to the grand composition which 
shall develop many a theme in wondrous harmonies. There must be 
the porch to the temple, but it is vastly inferior. There may be a preface 
to the book which shall give some idea of the writer’s purpose. The 
prelude may contain some hints and suggestions of the grand harmonies 
which are to follow. But it is not the porch or the preface or the prelude 
which are the important features. They are insignificant in comparison 
with that to which they lead. And so the life that now is so vastly 
inferior to the life that is to be, that we may well speak of one who has 
gone hence in peace as having entered into life. 


472 


FUNERAL SERMONS AND ADDRESSES 


The second expression, “Asleep in Jesus,” brings deep comfort to 
those who think of the cc ndition of the departed one. He has fallen 
asleep. The long weary day is ended and rest comes at length. Tired 
with life’s trials and wearied with its burdens he puts them all aside and 
forgets them. He is as one who sleeps — and he has gone to rest with 
entire confidence, for he sleeps in Jesus. 

You have seen the child as the day ends falling asleep so confi- 
dently in the arms of the mother. No fear of harm. Those loving arms 
are open, and with a sense of perfect security the little one seeks rest 
there. So the Christian makes no leap in the dark, goes with no uncer- 
tain rush into the future, but calmly rests in the arms of the Lord Jesus. 

But sleep implies an awakening, and as there is no slumber of the 
soul, we are bidden to think of the resurrection. That is the awakening 
for the tired, worn out body, when the Lord shall call it forth to be 
changed into the glory of the body of the resurrection. Blessed sleep 
from which none ever wakes to weep. 

Then the third expression, “Forever with the Lord,” indicates the 
conditions under which the life beyond is spent. It is life with the 
Lord. It is life in His nearer presence. We are, in a sense, always with 
the Lord. Even here in this vale of misery, but to be with Him, in this 
higher sense, is to know more of Him, to be more conscious of Him, 
to be more receptive of His presence and to become more like Him in 
the grace of His imparted attributes. 

To be with the Lord, in a Christian sense, is to grow beneath His 
favor, and to take into one’s self what emenates from Him, so that there 
is implied a steady, happy progression in the beauty and stability of a 
righteous character. It is growing as growth was impossible here. It is 
becoming what men, tried and tempted in the life that now is, could not 
become. 

Who shall describe the graces and the gladness of the soul thus 
developing in the life that is forever with the Lord? What words shall 
indicate what the soul is to be like that takes into itself those elements 
of the Christ life which will authorize the statement that when He shall 
appear we shall be like Him? Shall be like Him! Ever growing like 
Him! Forever with the Lord! 

And so today, as we think of the departed follower of Christ, there 
come to mind those three significant Christian sayings: “Entered into 
Life,” “Asleep in Jesus,” “Forever with the Lord.” — Rev. George Wolfe 
Shinn, D. D. 


“AND PHAROAH SAID UNTO JACOB, HOW OLD ART 
THOU ?” — GEN. 47:8. 

REV. PROF. GEORGE L. ROBINSON, PH. D., D. D., L. L. D. 

Life is not measured by the calendar, but by experience. We may 
live but a few years and yet experience much. Jacob had experienced 
much. To Jacob life was a pilgrimage, at the end of which was Death;] 


GENERAL REFLECTIONS ON LIFE AND DEATH 


473 


for even the patriarchs who lived long and saw many years were forced 
to die. 

I. Life as to years of experience has two points of measurement — * 
the cradle and the grave. You may be twenty, thirty, forty, or fifty 
years from the cradle, but how many are you from the grave? Life is a 
journey already begun. The march of time resembles the onward rush 
of a railroad train as it leaves the Hudson of life and moves westward 
toward the Mississippi of death. At one station, the train stops to take 
on new passengers; at another, to let some off. Seats are vacated by one 
group, and filled again by others. The process is oft-repeated, but, at 
last, the engine blows the whistle, the final curve is rounded and we are 
brought into the depot of our destination — death. For death is the final 
doom of all. There is an Arabic proverb which says, “Death is the black 
camel that kneels at every man’s door.” Sooner or later, we, too, 
must die. 

II. How old -art thou? To answer this all-important question, 
measure life by what you have experienced of the joys of Christian ser- 
vice, by the faith you have in Christ, and by the hope you have of eternal 
life. If your measurements are satisfactory, then all fear of death will 
vanish. Wrong views of death will disappear. There are four common 
attitudes of the human mind toward death. First, there is the crouch- 
ing attitude, suggesting the predominance of death. Second, there is the 
attitude of flight, suggesting a hope of escape, or as Hume was wont to 
put it, “a leap in the dark.” A third attitude is that of conflict, intimat- 
ing a prospect of vanquishing death. Lastly, there is an attitude of 
reconciliation, which denies the reality of death; death being swallowed 
up in victory. The last is the attitude of the Christian. To the ques- 
tion, therefore, “What is life” we may answer. Life is a patient waiting; 
death, a falling asleep. Life is an apprenticeship. “Man that is born 
of a woman is of few days and full of trouble.” Life is a struggle; 
oftentimes without much light or brightness. But Christ is in the dark 
room with the soul which He redeems. Life is a vestibule: it may be 
narrow and lampless, but it is straight before the door. Life is short; 
short at longest. 

III. But what is death? The ancient Romans were wont to inscribe 
upon their costly mausoleums the Latin word abreptus, “snatched,” but 
the Christians later wrote upon their catacombs the simple inscription 
dormit, “he sleeps.” Death is a falling asleep for all who have seen the 
risen Lord. To such, dying is just a part of living. 

Death is like a bridge, one pier of which is on the unseen shore. 
Over this bridge men pass into uninvaded rest. All is night. But the 
night of death is soon passed. It is brief; how long we do not know. 
Neither know we the occupation of our loved ones between death and 
the resurrection. But the period at longest is brief, and doubtless pleas- 
ant. The dead are in Christ’s keeping. 

IV. What of Eternity? Eternity is time extended; time is “the seed- 
plot of eternity.” Or, to change the figure: “Time writes the table of 
contents; eternity writes the book.” Eternity continues time. Life there 
begins where it left off here. Very little is known about heaven. The 


474 


FUNERAL SERMONS AND ADDRESSES 


theme is too vast for human comprehension. There is a silent reserve 
about heaven throughout Scripture. Much is left to the sanctified imag- 
ination. But we may be sure that heaven means fellowship and com- 
panionship with God and Christ, and also with friends. Heaven also 
means progress and advancement — in knowledge, in wisdom, in purity 
and in power. It also means service. Christ doubtless continues to 
use his disciples also in heaven. He has ten thousand posts of service. 
He sends our departed ones on errands of love, as ministering spirits. 
Heaven also means sovereignty. To one entering His kingdom, Jesus 
said, “Have thou authority over ten cities.” To another, “I will make 
thee ruler over many things.” To his disciples, “Ye shall sit on thrones, 
judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” While of all the saints, he said, 
“And they shall reign forever and ever.” — Rev. Prof. George L. Robin- 
son, Ph. D., D. D., L. L. D. 

THE GRAVE AND THE GARDEN. 

REV. A. B. MELDRUM, D. D. 

“There was a garden, and in the garden a new sepulchre.” — John 
19:41. 

It was part of the ambition of the old-time Jew to possess his own 
grave. There was no law, as with us, that prevented him being buried 
in any spot he could call his own. The thrifty Jew, therefore would 
select and purchase the site that seemed to him desirable for the purpose. 
Grass was sown and flowers were planted and nurtured on the thin soil. 
It was regarded as a sacred place, a consecrated spot. 

Jerusalem abounded in such quiet and consecrated spots. And hard 
by the hill of Calvary was a garden with its sepulchre, never yet used, 
hewn out of the solid limestone rock, by one, Joseph of Arimathea, a secret 
disciple of Jesus. 

To this new tomb in the garden not far from the cross, loving hands 
bore the scarred body of the dear Lord. 

One or two thoughts suggested by this text: 

I. There is a grave in every garden. No garden on earth, however 
fair and beautiful, but hath is sepulchre new or old. Blooming flowers 
and twining ivy may hide it from other eyes, but every man who hath 
come to middle life knows the corner of his life garden where, hewn 
out of the rock of experience, is a tomb in which lies buried something 
to which he once clung as he did to life itself. Some aspiring hope, some 
scheme of daring ambition, some disappointed expectation, some well- 
laid plan that went “aglee,” some blighted affection, some faith slain by 
doubt, some doubt slain by faith lies buried in some nook or corner of 
almost every life; and ever and anon, the mind betakes itself thither in 
bitterness, or in joy, in comfort or in despair, to recall the occasion which 
made a break in the even tenor of life, and made it ever after, different 
from what it had been before, different for better or for worse. There 
are other funerals besides those which wend their way solemn and slow 
through our streets to the silent city of the dead. There are other 


GENERAL REFLECTIONS ON LIFE AND DEATH 


475 


graves besides those marked by slab or shaft in memory of those who 
lie beneath. There are other deaths besides those which put a term to 
human existence. We do not know all that happens. You may know 
your neighbor well, and yet in his life as in your own, there is some little 
space walled off, shut in, a consecrated spot in the field of his own life 
which you cannot explore; a garden where there is a sepulchre, in which 
lie the remains of that of which he thinks much, but says little. 

Sometimes the wall of reserve between friends falls away, or the 
little gate that has “private” marked on it opens and each finds some- 
thing surprising in the other. Each finds his secret matched by the 
secret of the other. They look into each other’s faces and as they clasp 
hands with a tighter grip, say each to the other. “I did not know of the 
grave in your garden.” 

It would help us all to a friendlier attitude towards all men, if we 
only would remember that there is a grave in every garden. That grave 
in the garden is the great equalizer of human life. It makes all men kin. 
For the most part it is selfishness that lends bitterness to human sorrow. 
It does this by leading us to imagine that ours is the only garden in 
which there is a grave, that ours is the only loss, the only pain, the only 
defeat, that we are unlike all others in respect to the trouble that has 
befallen us. The cure of this selfishness is sympathy. And the spring of 
sympathy is the knowledge that what we bear, others are bearing, that 
what we have lost others have lost, that what we suffer others have 
suffered or are suffering, that w r hat w r e have buried others have had to 
bury. For there is no garden that hath not its grave. 

II. A garden surrounds every grave, and we should live in the gar- 
den and not in the grave. 

God intends that we shall live in the open air, in the sunshine and 
among the trees and the flowers, not in the dark, damp atmosphere of 
the grave. 

We should thank God for the garden that surrounds the grave, for 
the new flowers that bloom in the place of the old flowers that have 
faded, for the new hopes that have sprung up in the place of the old 
hopes that have vanished, for the new desires and affection and pur- 
poses which have taken the places of those which have been buried. It 
may not be well to forget the dead, neither is it well to forget the living. 
Better indeed that we should forget the dead than that we should remem- 
ber them in a way that unfits us for duty to the living. 

Things are never as bad as they might be. The garden helps us 
wonderfully to bear up even in sight of the grave. The good Lord never 
permits such a calamity to befall any child of His as shall forever destroy 
in that soul the possibility of further happiness and joy. The winter 
may be long and bitter, but spring cometh anon, with its singing birds 
and opening buds, the annual miracle of Nature’s Resurrection. There 
may be a long winter in the soul, a winter of sorrow and loneliness, but 
the spring cometh again with its mild winds from the south, and its blos- 
soms of hope and of peace, making fair and beautiful the garden which 
surrounds the grave. 


476 


FUNERAL SERMONS AND ADDRESSES 


If unbelief ever planted a flower of hope, what man ever found it? 
If doubt ever sowed a seed of comfort, in whose sad heart did it ever 
bloom? Around what grave did infidelity ever make a garden? Nay, the 
garden that surrounds the grave was planted by Him who came into this 
world with power to say, “I am the resurrection and the life, he that 
believeth in me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of 
life.” The Bible rings with cry, ‘‘Be of good cheer.” ‘‘Let not your 
heart be troubled.” He who calls God his father, sees some things as 
God sees them. To the man of faith, even the pathetic side of life, the 
side that is clouded, has a rich significance. He is forced to look up 
for help, and looking up he sees, through his streaming eyes, the garden 
of holy promise and hope that surrounds the grave. 

III. Friends, let us try to live in the garden instead of the grave. 

Yes, there are sighs and tears, but he who trusts in Christ, and 
strives to live the Christ-life, may even weep with hope, and his sorrow 
at the setting of the sun is cheered by the promise of a better morrow. 
There is a grave in every garden, but, blessed be the name of God, there 
is a garden surrounding every grave. — Rev. A. B. Meldrum, D. D. 


LOVE AND DEATH. 

REV. LYMAN ABBOTT, D. D. 

In the famous Watts collection is a striking picture entitled ‘‘Love 
and Death.” Death, not vindictive nor malignant, but driven forward as 
by the forcefulness of an irresistible fate, presses her way into the door 
of a humble home. Love stands before it, pushed back upon the crushed 
roses that clamber above the doorway, and, with upraised arm and appeal- 
ing eyes, in vain endeavors to stay the calm, silent, but unappeasable 
and irresistible Intruder. The picture appeals to every heart that has 
ever known sorrow. But are we sure that it is true? Is it love that 
resists death? Or is it self? 

Centuries ago, before Christ’s words had gone out into all the world 
bringing life and immortality to light, and turning the piteous hope born 
of despair into the joyous hope born of faith, the Pagan Plutarch asked 
this question, and in asking answered it. “When,” said he, “they mourn 
over those who die so untimely, do they do it upon their own account or 
upon that of the deceased? If upon their own, because they have lost 
what pleasure they thought they should have enjoyed in them, or that 
relief they flattered themselves they should have received from them in 
their old age, their self-love and personal interest prescribe the measures 
of their sorrow; so that upon the result they do not love the dead so 
much as themselves and their own interests.” 

Christ Himself enunciated more clearly the same truth. “If ye loved 
me,” he said to his sorrowing friends — and in that “if” there is a tone of 
reproachful questioning — “if ye loved me, ye would rejoice because I 
said, I go unto the Father; for my Father is greater than I.” 

Surely, to every sorrowing mother the dying child may say this; 
to every husband the dying wife; to every sorrowing friend the friend 


GENERAL REFLECTIONS ON LIFE AND DEATH 


477 


who is dying. Love rejoices in death; self grieves. And whether joy or 
sorrow is uppermost depends on this: whether love or self is supreme in 
the hour of grief. Is it not so? 

What is death? The separation of the soul from the body. Is that 
a cause for love’s grieving? Is this body so excellent an aid to large and 
holy living that we need mourn when a loved one leaves it? Few are 
there whose body is free from some positive ailment and pain; fewer 
still who are not harassed and burdened by its infirmities; none who does 
not at times feel hindered by incumbrances. As the music in the soul of 
the organist is more than he can interpret on the keys, as the vision of 
the artist is more than he can embody on the canvas or in the stone, as 
the dream of the poet is more than the words of the poem, so the life of 
the spirit is more than the interpretation of that life in words or deeds. 
The body is a cage; the cage laments the bird, but the bird does not 
lament the cage. No wonder that the flesh fights hard to keep its 
inmate within its walls; for when the spirit is gone the body is naught. 
When the glory departs, the tabernacle becomes a common tent, and is 
straightway taken down. But to be free from the perpetual decay of 
the earthly tabernacle, to be released from its pains and its infirmities, 
to be emancipated from its clogs and its incumbrances, to have the 
chrysalis break and the winged soul let loose — this hour of freedom is 
not to be dreaded before it comes, nor mourned afterward; but to be 
rejoiced in. Self sits by the tenantless prison cell and mourns; but love 
looks up and is glad that the prisoner has escaped into the liberty of the 
sons of God. 

Death is translation out of darkness into light! out of mystery into 
the clear shining of the truth. “To die — to sleep: To sleep! perchance 
to dream.” No! no! Great poet you are wrong. Death is not sleeping; 
it is awaking out of sleep. Life is a sleep — a dream. “What shadows 
we are; what shadows we pursue!” Sometimes it is an entrancing 
dream of ecstatic delight, or hope more yet ecstatic. Sometimes a horri- 
ble nightmare, of bitter grief, or of fear yet bitterer. But both are 
shadows and both disappear: the ecstasy of pain into an ecstasy of 
pleasure. As in dreams so in what we call life, only the shadows do we 
know; the realities that cast them are always just beyond our vision. 
Living is dying and dying is living. For in living we are always in transi- 
tion and decay; and in dying we pass from the temporal to the eternal, 
from the mortal to the immortal, from the seeming to the real. The 
plant born in the darkness struggles through the darkness toward the 
sunlight and the air and the sweet songs of birds and the fragrance of 
spring, blindly pushing its way onward and upward, not knowing what it 
seeks. Who will mourn when it emerges from its mystery and its dark- 
ness into the light of God? This is what we call dying; going from the 
darkness, the perplexity, the unsolved mystery of earth into the eternal 
light. To know even as we are known; to find an interpretation of all 
our uninterpretable longings, and in God’s gift of life more than all our 
unutterable prayers had sought — how can love mourn that this gladness 
has come to the loved one? 


478 


FUNERAL SERMONS AND ADDRESSES 


Dying is freedom from temptation and from sin. It is escape from 
the double I; this I that would not and yet does, that would, yet does not. 
It is going from the seventh chapter of Romans into the eighth, there 
to abide forever. On earth our best music is dissonant, for our instru- 
ment is sadly out of tune. To die is to be set in tune of God’s eternal 
keynote — love. It is to come into harmony with one’s self, and therefore 
with God; it is to come into harmony with God, and therefore with one’s 
self. What is sometimes said as descriptive of especial characters every 
man might well say of himself: He is his own worst enemy. Can love, 
pure love, unselfish love resist such emancipation when it approaches, or 
lament it when it has come? 

Alas for him whose busy hands have harvested nothing than that 
which death takes away! and to whom therefore death comes as a thief 
in the night. But for him whose life has been one of faith and hope and 
love, dying is coronation. Self may weep; but love will rejoice. — Rev. 
Lyman Abbott, D. D. 


THOUGHTS ON DEATH. 

RABBI J. LEONARD LEVI, D. D. 

Life is a scene of care and earth is a vale of tears. Faith in the wise 
counsels of God leads us to find a benevolent purpose in our cares, and 
His revealed will bids us to convert the valley of sorrow into a gate of 
hope. Most of our trials can be met in the belief that relief awaits 
them; but what of that great affliction that enters all homes, when the 
last scene of all is enacted and the angel of death bears the loved one 
from our side? 

It is as natural to die as to be born, says the philosopher. On the 
day of birth man incurs a debt, of which death is the payment. The 
price of life is death. All that is earthly, however precious and beautiful, 
fades away. Youth, with its bright visions, vanishes. Health declines 
and strength fails. All our priceless possessions, even love and friend- 
ship, pass away, and life itself is vanquished by all-conquering death. 
Whether earth’s journey takes us over perilous mountains and alongside 
yawning abysses, or through flowering meadows and by murmuring 
brooks, at the end all must pass through the sombre valley of the shadow 
of death into the silent land of the pitiless tomb. There is nothing 
abiding but God, nothing indestructible but the Eternal Father of Man- 
kind, from whom we come and under the shadow of whose pinions we 
ultimately rest in the everlasting abode of the blessed. 

It is this hope that sustains us in the dark hour of numbing grief. 
Man is an immortal mortal. Standing for a while on a bridge uniting 
the mystery of birth with the mystery of death, he finally passes into the 
icy arms of death, to live again in the likeness of God, though his dust- 
born form repose on the cold bosom of the insensate earth. Night here 
means light elsewhere. Sunset here means sunrise there. Darkness now 
means dawn hereafter. The winter of death is the precurser of the spring 
of unending life. 


GENERAL REFLECTIONS ON LIFE AND DEATH 


479 


Whatever death may mean for the departed, and we believe that it 
means peace and rest and beatitude, it means intense grief to those who 
survive and live separated from their loved ones. They die, who so 
much long to live — the healthy and the hopeful. They die who are most 
needed here — the protector, the provider. They die of whom the world 
has so much need — the benefactor, the benignant. They die that form 
the charm of life — our friendships, our loves. No heat ever parched 
more completely, no plough ever furrowed more surely, than does death 
sear and leave its lines of trouble on the heart of the bereaved. The 
young husband or wife, conjuring up the sweet and lovely dreams of a 
happy future, smiling and joyous in their pure devotion, with love’s halo 
beaming above them, and affection’s tie uniting them, are suddenly parted 
by the grim messenger; or those who for years have been joined by 
bonds of tenderness, whose love has gone hand in hand with the vow 
made at the marriage altar, who had been all faithfulness, all devotion, 
all self-sacrifice, are separated by the mournful angel. Or the stricken 
parents clasp the cold form of their beloved child, the pride of the home, 
the joy of their household, who has fallen asleep in death, crying all the 
time, “Why, O God, hast Thou smitten us? There is no healing to us.” 

In the day of desolation, in the hour when around us lie the broken 
fragments of our hopes and joys, in the day when we speak to the unre- 
sponsive clay and weep over the motionless form, none but the abiding 
God can help, nothing but the hope of immortality can assuage the bitter- 
ness of our grief. And when the first intensity of pain is over and time 
has accustomed us to our loss, nothing will prove of greater consolation 
than the precious memory of the beloved, whose days w r ere rich in bless- 
ing. The radiant picture of the sainted dead will dwell in the memory 
of their survivors, and though dead, they will speak; though departed, 
they will influence succeeding generations for God and good, for right- 
eousness and truth. 

Death has all seasons for its own. It will strike the aged oak and 
blast the mossy bud. With sweet lullaby it will sing to sleep the babe 
in its innocence; with outstretched wing it will carry away the broken 
form of the aged. It will bear from the valley of earth to bloom in the 
land of evergreens, the bride robed in her joy; it will take from the vale 
of tears to the gate of hope, the widow clad in mourning. It respects 
not the spring or the autumn, the summer or the winter of existence. 
Its shafts speed in the bright noonday; its arrows fly at black midnight. 
When suns rise and set, when oceans ebb and flow, when buds peep and 
fruits are mellow, death is busy. All that live must die and as the days 
make their unseen marks upon the dial plate of time, our turn will come. 
— Rabbi J. Leonard Levi, D. D. 

DEATH NO STRANGER. 

REV. JAS. W. FI FIELD, D. D. 

I stop to think of death as I live in all the beauty and gladness of 
life. About me is the music of a busy world, the singing of forms of 
industry and the anthem of living joy. How sad to think of death as we 


480 


FUNERAL SERMONS AND ADDRESSES 


drink from the full cup of an overflowing life. What dark meanings it 
has! What unknown mysteries it contains! How it stops the music as 
though all the instruments were to break! Death and the sigh falls 
from the lips and the sorrow penetrates the heart and the sun goes down 
upon the scene. But let us pause and think. Can this he true? Is death 
a stranger to us, some enemy whom we are to lock from the palace gate i 
Does death come to us but once and bring only a calamity for a gift? 
Deeper than all this is another truth. Death is no stranger. We are 
continually in its presence. Death is with us like the air we breathe or 
as the light of mornings which cease not to come. We are always dying. 
In our bodies the process is working now. With every act and with each 
new breath we die in part. And this is that we may better live. Nature 
is good to us and our constant dying is so that we may be new and strong 
and fresh for the labors and delights of life. Why, the books of science 
say that in every seven years we are changed and made anew in body. 
As death is a physical experience we are dying all the time and die 
completely in every seven years. Yet we fear it not for death is the only 
way to life. The only difference between this continual death and death 
as we think of it in common speech is that one is gradual and the other 
is more abrupt. The process is one. Each is the making way for life. 
Each is in the body only. Each is as it should be in the wonderful pro- 
gram of nature and life. 

And herein is a happy argument for immortality. If the soul has 
perished not in all these deaths in life we may well believe that it will 
not perish when the body meets its simultaneous death. When one has 
reached the full age of seventy the body has died ten times and yet the 
soul with all its powers of love and knowledge, of purpose and memory, 
has lived on. So will it ever live on. Man changes his coat, but lives 
within each garment and the body is only the garment of the soul to be 
put away when outworn that the eternal part may be clothed with the 
beautiful raiment of the spirit. — Rev. Jas. W. Fifield, D. D. 


“THEN COMETH THE END.” — MATT 24:14 

REV. C. A. JESSUP, M. A. 

A day or two ago we were watching beside a bed of pain, "waiting,” 
so we said, “for the end.” Each sign of suffering wrung our hearts; 
and how ready were the hands of love to supply the needed palliative 
to give relief to the stricken body! We watched, and waited — was it 
for hours, or for days, or only for minutes? We could hardly tell. In 
the monotony of the sickroom, time is measured by heart-throbs, not by 
the clock, nor even by the rising and setting sun. Then came the moment 
of temporary excitement, when the absent ones were hurriedly sum- 
moned, when they said "the end is near,” when the struggling breath 
came more and more feebly, when at last the finger on the pulse detected 
no answering throb. Then they said, “It is over.” And through our 
tears we answered, “Thank God, the end was peaceful.” 

The end! Nay, not the end. ’Twas but a turning in life’s path 
which then was reached by the soul we love; yet round that bend in 


GENERAL REFLECTIONS ON LIFE AND DEATH 


m 


the road we may not see. But that soul still journeys on; and what 
seemed to us an end, seems to it (so we believe) more like a beginning. 
The flowers of earth bloom not beyond that turning, round which has 
passed our friend; but other flowers, of the spirit life, are there. The 
journey seems by no means ended, to those who have passed through 
that episode in a continuous life, to which we, in our ignorance, give the 
harsh name of “death.” The path still stretches on before the soul 
which has left its bruised and stricken, perhaps its worn-out, body behind 
in this world — a path which it now treads earnestly, trustfully, joyfully. 
Another “end” is now before it, another turn in life’s unbroken but ever- 
changing road. Toward this new end the soul turns its gaze — not with- 
out loving remembrance of those who still live in the body, not without 
prayers for them; but with its chiefest and its gladdest thoughts fixed 
on that future, when another stage of the journey will be over, another 
“end” reached — the end which we call “the resurrection.” With the 
devoted sister of Bethany we say, “I know that my brother shall rise 
again, in the resurrection at the last day.” And looking forward to that 
“day,” we seem to see another Figure walking among the sons of men — a 
Figure whose presence has been felt, but not seen, before — a Figure 
glorious, divine, yet human. And with Him are those whom we “have 
loved long since, and lost awhile.” 

And when we question, eagerly, anxiously, “What is beyond?” — the 
answer comes back, “Eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard, neither hath 
entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for 
them that love Him.” 

In these lesser endings, of certain stages in life’s journey, when our 
loved ones or we ourselves pass the turning-point of death, let us look 
to that greater end, when Christ, who is our life, shall appear, and we 
too appear with Him in glory. Aye, let us look farther, and yet farther, 
even to that Great End, when our brother now departed, and we, and all 
that are, shall be one with God! — Rev. C. A. Jessup, M. A. 


“WE KNOW NOT WHAT A DAY MAY BRING FORTH.” 

—REV. 27:1. 

REV. ROBERT FORBES, D. D. 

I. The uncertainty of life brings a moral pressure to bear upon 
humanity that seems to be a necessity in our present state of being. 
If all lives were to be extended to seventy years, the youth of twenty 
would probably say, I have full fifty years yet. I will not withhold my 
heart from any joy — time enough to think of my spiritual welfare. 
The busy man of forty on business bent might say, I have thirty years 
yet; time enough to think of religious matters, and Human Nature being 
as it is I fear the man of sixty might say. Have I not ten years of life 
yet? Time enough! Press on till wisdom is pushed out of life. God’s 
order is better. It is ordained that smiling infancy, youthful beauty, 
manhood’s strength and womanhood’s charms as well as age and feeble- 
ness extreme, are all alike exposed to the stroke of death. One may say, I£ 


482 


FUNERAL SERMONS AND ADDRESSES 


the uncertainty of life is necessary that the had may feel the necessity 
of reformation, surely the good should be exempt from this uncertainty. 
The answer is men would then try to be good to escape the uncertainty 
of life and the motive being wrong the only goodness would be an 
impossibility. We must learn to love virtue for its own sake. Only thus 
can virtue be virtue. 

II. Life is not a preparation for death. Life is the one great oppor- 
tunity for the development of character. He is prepared for death who 
is prepared for life. The sacraments are not needed so much for the 
dying as for the living sons of men. The dying child is the one that does 
not need baptism. The child that is likely to live and enter the contest 
with the world, the flesh and the devil, is the one that needs baptism. 

III. Sin and sorrow and the grave are facts, facts for the agnostic 
as well as for the believer. As we ponder on the facts and are bewild- 
ered in our attempt to construct a philosophy which accounts for all the 
facts we turn to the cross of Jesus and to the open tomb of Joseph’s 
garden, for relief. The world admires and the church worships Him 
who was so tender that he took little children in His arms and blessed 
them, who was so sympathetic that He wept with the bereaved sisters, 
who was so wise that He uttered words of wisdom, such as to keep the 
brains of twenty centuries busy. Who was so brave and grand that 
He went to His cross to die without a murmur, and who was so mag- 
nanimous that He prayed for His murderers. This man died and rose 
again. He stood with His feet on death’s cold pavement, and whispered 
in words tender and strong, words that have come down to us in the 
breezes of the centuries, “I am He that liveth and' was dead and behold, 
I am alive for evermore.” Here is the comfort, after all the earth’s 
mourning ones. 

The best manner in which we can show our respect for the dead is 
to take up their unfinished work and the burdens which they laid down. 
—Rev. Robert Forbes, D. D. 


“BE YE ALSO READY.” — MATT. 24:44. 

LINA JEANETTE WALK. 

I. It is a strange fact that we nearly all dread death. This world, 
transitory and unsatisfying as it is, has a wonderful influence over us. 
We shrink from the thought of death as though it were an enemy instead 
of a joyful messenger whose hand unlocks the gates of immortality. 
The grave is a dark, fathomless abyss to our terrified imagination, rather 
than the radiant vestibule of heaven through which we pass into the 
more luminous glories of our Father’s house and the mansion prepared 
for us. Poor, timorous, faithless souls that we are! how groundless we 
shall find these fears when we come to die, if we have made preparation 
for death! How we shall smile at our vain alarms, when the reality has 
happened! When the morning cometh we shall awaken in the sunlight 
of God. 


GENERAL REFLECTIONS ON LIFE AND DEATH 


483 


II. How is preparation to be made? The command given by our 
Saviour, “Watch,” does not allude altogether, as some have understood 
it, to his second coming, neither was it meant to be put into practice 
only when the thief, or death, was expected. It was intended as a warn- 
ing for all times and a continual safeguard for every-day living. Bishop 
Hall says, “Each day is a new life and an abridgment of the whole. I 
will so live as if I counted every day to be my first and my last; as if I 
began to live then, and should live no more afterward.” His life was 
evidently a life of watchfulness, and therefore one of safety. Every life 
lived upon this principle of Christian vigilance need have no forebodings 
for the future. Such a life is a constant preparation for death. 

Like a thief in the night the enemy of souls will seek to attack us. 
We must watch, therefore, that he takes us not unawares. There is no 
hour in our lives when we can with safety withhold our watch over self. 
Did we but realize this more fully there would be no spiritual languor 
nor slothfulness, only earnest endeavor in spiritual energy and activity. 
A legend is told of a man who waited at the gates of Paradise a thousand 
years for them to open. At the end of that time he fell asleep for a 
half hour. In that half hour the gates were opened and closed again, 
and he awoke to find himself shut out. Let us not grow weary, nor relax 
our efforts. — Lina Jeanette Walk. 


MYSTERY. 

REV. CYRUS MENDENHALL. 

One need never go far to find mysteries. Our knowledge in any 
direction is partial; hence some things are shrouded in mystery. Many 
things, now pretty well understood, were entirely mysterious to the 
ancients. 

Matters pertaining to chemistry, astronomy, the practice of medi- 
cine, and the phenomena of nature, that are now commonplace, were 
then magical or mysterious. The gods did everything by direct inter- 
ference. Even the flight of birds, the appearance of entrails, the flash 
of meteors, the movement of comets, were miraculous. 

While it is true we account for things in a scientific or matter-of-fact 
way, we have not dispelled all mystery. We cannot reduce all things 
to a logical sequence. The scalpel, crucible, balances, agents, and re- 
agents, microscope and telescope, revealing so much, yet open up new 
marvels and spring new puzzles, so that with Carlyle, we say: “Sense 
knows not, faith knows not, only that it is through mystery to mystery, 
from God to God.” 

All this that is hidden inspires men to search for revelations of the 
mysteries, and has led to the progress and learning of today. Many 
hidden mysteries have been revealed, but men are so soon and so 
frequently balked that humility is always in order: 


484 


FUNERAL SERMONS AND ADDRESSES 


“A marvel seems the universe, 9 

A miracle our life and death; 

A mystery which I cannot pierce, 

Around, above, beneath.” 

Strange things come into the most quiet and ordinary existences. 
At almost any step, painful or pleasurable, we may pause and ask “Why?” 
And can w*e always find an answer to the query? 

We see the beginnings, and the ending is lost in the perspective. 
We are too near-sighted to judge. “Therefore judge nothing before the 
time, until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things 
of darkness and will make manifest the counsels of the heart.” 

A full solution of the problems of life, sorrow, public and private 
calamities, sin and its sequences, and the mystery of death, cannot be 
reached here. But if somewhat perplexed, we need never be in despair 
if we have learned through Christ to confide in a loving Father, who in 
the ultimate will work all things out for good. 

Love is the clue to it all. And love gives us an undying inspiration 
to spur us on in working at the problems all around us. In our faith, 
our hope, our devotion, let no mystery terrify us, no marvel stand between 
us and the Father who, whatever else He may or may not be, is a God 
of love. 

“O, Light Divine, we need no fuller test 7 

That all is ordered well; 

We know enough to trust that all is best 
[Where love and wisdom dwell.” 

— Rev. Cyrus Mendenhall. 


II. DEATH OF THE YOUNG. 

CHRIST AND CHILDHOOD. 

REV. KERR BOYCE TUPPER, D. D. 

One of the most beautiful and suggestive scenes in all the earthly 
career of the Son of Man is that which reveals, on a certain occasion, 
with such delicate touches, our Lord’s tender treatment of children. 
How picturesquely Mark — the evangelist most noted for his graphic 
style — presents ahe incident! “And they brought little children to Him, 
that He should touch them: and His disciples rebuked those that brought 
them. But when Jesus saw it, He was much displeased, and said unto 
them, Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not: 
for of such is the kingdom of God. Verily I say unto you, whosoever shall 
not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein. 
And He took them up in His arms, put His hands upon them and blessed 
them.” 

Every feature of the exquisite picture attracts: the lovely flowers 
all about (for it is now spring-time), the charming Judean landscape, the 
earnest countenances of the parents, the beautiful faces of innocent 
childhood and the strong, manly form of the Christ, as, rebuking worthy 
but mistaken disciples, He takes the little ones in His arms, and speaks 
words of holy benediction, rich with the music of a heavenly love. Im- 
mortal picture — full of spiritual significance — which may well hang 
in the gallery of each of our imaginations, an inspiration and a delight! 

More than simply an attractive scene, however, this Palestinian 
incident suggests to us some most comforting thoughts as we gather to 
pay a last tribute of tender affection to a little child whom God has taken 
to Himself in the fairer realm beyond, where every bud bursts into blos- 
som and every blossom is filled with fruit. 

I. And the first of these thoughts is this: Christ’s love of childhood 
for childhood’s sake and childhood’s possibilities. When the babe Jesus 
opened the wondrous scenes of divinity in humanity and angels chanted 
their cradle-hymn over the new-born Son of Mary — then came childhood’s 
coronation-day! As another has beautifully expressed it, “Just as the 
light from the child in Corregio’s Holy Night illuminates all surrounding 
figures, so the glory of that birth sheds an unfading lustre on all the 
world.” No wonder that our children are so tenderly loved and vigor- 
ously protected. No wonder that all over Christian lands are asylums 
for blind children and deaf, orphaned children and destitute. No wonder 
that the church, inspired by the words and deeds of its Master and Lord, 
regulates its worship and constructs its buildings and creates its litera- 
ture largely for children. The ancient prophecy is being fulfilled, “And 
a little child shall lead,” 


486 


FUNERAL SERMONS AND ADDRESSES 


To Paganism childhood has always represented only immaturity of 
mind and weakness of body. In other systems than that of Christianity 
the child is but little regarded. Writes recently a traveler in the Orient: 
“Two and a half years have I spent in China, but not a single monument 
or tomb-stone have I seen marking the grave of a child.” What an 
astoundingly sad fact! More than a third of a million of graves are dug 
in China every fifty years and any token of a child’s burial is an excep- 
tion. Ah! the explanation is not far to seek: paganism has heard no 
voice from its great teachers, as Budha and Confucius, telling out the 
glad message, “Of such like the child is the kingdom of heaven.” Take 
that fact and place it over against a scene like that before us this hour, 
or contrast it with the attitude of our Lord when, on another occasion, 
He declares, “Except ye become as little children ye shall not enter into 
the kingdom of heaven.” According to this Mighty Master of the ages 
the child, with his simple faith and unaffected confidence and sincere 
love, is the most attractive type of discipleship — the child whose “angels 
do always behold the face of the Father in heaven.” 

And so it has come that to the man or woman who is a lover of the 
true, the beautiful and the good childhood is irresistibly attractive. 
“Blessed be childhood,” writes, in genuine enthusiasm, the eminent 
mystic, Amiel, “which brings down something of heaven into the midst 
of our rough earthliness. These eighty thousand daily births, of which 
statistics tell us, represent, as it were, an effusion of innocence and 
freshness, struggling not only against the death of the race but against 
human corruption, also, and the universal gangrene of sin. All the good 
and wholesome feeling that is entwined with childhood and cradle is 
one of the secrets of the providential government of the world. Sup- 
press this lifegiving dew, and human society would be scorched and 
devastated by selfish passion. Blessed be childhood: what little of 
paradise we see still on earth is due to its presence among us.” 

II. Again as Christ blest the little ones with heavenly benedictions, 
so should parents dedicate their children early in life to God and His 
holy cause. Let no parent give over the spiritual education of his child 
to nurse or teacher. Not enough is it that we give to those whom God 
has given to us, name, food, clothing, shelter, education, fortune: we owe 
to them, also, and above all else, sympathy, solicitude, prayer, precept, 
example. 

III. A final thought, and one of supreme consolation: how clear, 
in all the scene before us in the beautiful narrative, is the implication 
of children’s salvation in the life beyond life. Who can gaze upon the 
attitude and the words of Jesus here and doubt that our darlings that 
die in infancy go to the bosom of their Redeemer, who so loves them 
and so graciously embraces them in His far-reaching salvation plan? 
Lovely buds these children a~e, transplanted by death in that larger 
garden above, where, in pure atmosphere and with heavenly fragrance, 
they are to blossom through the endless cycles of a glorious eternity. 
Blessed, thrice blessed thought! Let it bring joy to the grief stricken 
spirits of all of us who have lost darling children. How many such there 
be!. 


DEATH OF THE YOUNG 


487 


There is no flock, however watched and tended, 

But one dead lamb is there; 

There is no fireside, howe’er defended 
But has one vacant chair. 

And when the vacancy in the home is one made by the departure of 
of a babe, what comfort that we can hear such words as these: “Of 
such is the kingdom of heaven,” “Their angels do behold the face of 
my Father in heaven.” — Rev. Kerr Boyce Tupper, D. D. 


“AND HE CALLED A LITTLE CHILD UNTO HIM.”— 

MATT 18:2. 

REV. GEO. WOLFE SHINN, D. D. 

“Why did the good Lord permit it?” This question may arise in the 
mind of any sufferer when a great sorrow comes. 

It is most likely to present itself to the parent whose child has 
been removed by death. 

In the bewilderment occasioned by this event, and in the bitterness 
of grief at parting from one so tenderly loved the afflicted parent may 
ask: “Why could not our child have been spared to us?” 

“Other children, less cared for, live and grow up — why was our 
child called away?” 

Here are a few suggestions which may help you a little in your 
bewilderment and may comfort you in your grief. 

Some day, through God’s grace, you may be able to say, out of 
fullest trust and resignation: “The Lord gave and the Lord hath 
taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” 

1. Your child is still living. 

Your child has not been blotted out of existence. It has not ceased 
to live. That which died was only its body. Some day that natural 
body is to become a spiritual body, forever incapable of suffering and 
dying. In the meantime the soul of the child lives on in Paradise. The 
little one has simply changed its abode. It has gone to another home. 

We may think of it as, in a sense, attending another school, inas- 
much as it being trained and developed for higher joys and for higher 
service. Whenever your thoughts turn to your child do not associate 
it with the grave, as if that were all, for the little body you buried there 
was only the casket in which the soul lived for a while before God called 
it to Paradise. 

Think of the child as living in a new home, which is a real home 
even though your eyes can not see it now. 

2. The Child is tenderly cared for in Paradise. 

You did all you could for it while it was with you here, because you 
loved it. It lives today surrounded by affection. Long ago when the 


483 


FUNERAL SERMONS AND ADDRESSES 


Lord Jesus was here on earth He called little children to Him, took 
them up in His arms and blessed them. 

He is the same yesterday, today and forever, and He loves your 
child. It is safe with Him. Do not think of it as a lonely, wandering, 
uncared-for spirit in a dark, mysterious world, hut as a happy little child 
in the bright Paradise of God, with pleasant companions, in the midst 
of brightness and joy. No day of gloom ever dawns upon it, and there 
is no night to bring it terror. Ah — the child is safer where it is now 
than if it were even in your loving arms. 

“In Paradise reposing, by Life’s eternal well. 

The tender lambs of Jesus, in greenest pastures dwell. 

The angels, once their guardians, their comrades now in grace 
With them in love adoring, see God, the Father’s face.” 

3. Your child is spared all earthly sorrow. 

The child will never know trial or tribulation. It has gone out of 
the region where these abound. No temptation or sin will reach it. In 
that blessed home none ever go astray. You can always say: “Thank 
God my child is safe.” 

4. Your child sends you a message. 

Not in words, but its very condition in that blessed world is a 
message to you. It bids you be tender and helpful to all about you 
who are still struggling in this earthly life. 

5: Your child waits to welcome you home at last. 


THE EVER OPEN ARMS OF THE LORD JESUS. 

REV. GEO. WOLFE SHINN, D. D. 

If we turn to the world at such a time as this for words of conso- 
lation the best the world can say to us is — “Forget your troubles. Dismiss 
from your minds all thought of this present affliction and absorb your- 
selves in something else.” But we cannot forget. This sorrow is all 
too real, too keen, for forgetfulness. This little one brought so much 
gladness, awakened so many songs in these hearts — that they cannot 
forget. They do not want to forget. They would dwell upon the sweet 
memories of the past, but the very sweetness of those memories makes 
more vivid the affliction which has taken away the dear one. The world 
cannot comfort us by its opiates of forgetfulness. 

We turn to the philosophy of the day. We ask of men’s learning 
some expressions that will console us but what do we receive? They 
tell us of the inevitableness of death. It is an event common to all. 
They tell us of mighty forces working imperceptibly, of the feeble 
resistance we can make, and of the result that can only be postponed 
and not prevented. We grant it, but why did it come so soon here? 
Why was not this child permitted to live until the three score years 
and ten? Why was it not permitted to continue its blessed ministry 
of joy in this house? 


DEATH OF THE YOUNG 


489 


Philosophy has no answer for such questions and philosophy gives 
us no comfort in such an hour of need. Where shall we turn? There 
is but one answer. Only in the religion of Christ shall we find the 
comfort we seek. Just as soon as we turn to that there looms up before 
us a picture of long ago. A man is surrounded by a group of other men. 
There came to Him parents with their children. They beg Him to bless 
those children. At first His friends press aside the importunate sup- 
plicants — “Trouble not the Master” they say. “Go away. Why bring 
your children to Him?” 

But the Master Who knows all hearts is wiser and kinder than Hi# 
disciples and so He says: “Suffer the little children to come unto Me.” 
He takes them up in His arms. He blesses them. Think of that scene 
of long ago. Think of the little ones in His arms. Think of the gentle 
hand placed upon each one’s head. Think of the gracious lips saying — 
“Bless you, little child. Your Master, your Saviour blesses you.” Think 
of all that — and then remember that it is an object lesson for all time. 
Remember that there are still the same tender compassionate heart, 
the same powerful protecting arms, the same eternal refuge. Remember 
that and light begins to stream through the present dark clouds of 
sorrow. 

The child who has gone hence has found a resting place in the arms 
of the Son of God. He has called the little one to Him. He has blessed 
it. He is blessing it. It will grow up under His benediction. It is safe. 
No harm can ever come to it. It is happy beneath the smile of God. 

There is no need to perplex ourselves now over the mystery of 
death, no need to seek consolation anywhere else than in that one great 
truth that the child has found a place near the heart of the dear Christ. 

And as in all the years to come you think of the child you can be sure 
that it is never out of reach of that tender watchful love. It will grow 
in all the beauty of likeness to Him. 

By and by there will be the happy day of reunion. — Rev. Geo. 
Wolfe Shinn, D. D. 


FUTURE LIGHT ON PRESENT LOSS. 

REB. ROBERT FORBES, D. D. 

Your child dies. Your heart is broken, your home is desolate, the half 
worn shoe, she used to wear, the toy with which she played, will awaken 
your slumbering sorrow again and again, when time has partially healed 
the wound. Be patient: He doeth all things well. If you were walking 
along the street holding your child by the hand, in the holy pride and un- 
speakable joy of motherhood, and when you reached an unpleasant or 
dangerous place, you took the little one in your arms and carried her 
over and set her safely down beyond the unpleasant or dangerous place; 
you have done a kindness. So it may be that the Great Father of us 
all, as He held your child by the hand, some place of discomfort or 
pain or danger or loss, and in infinite tenderness took the little one up 
in His loving arms and placed her safely down on the other shore. 


490 


FUNERAL SERMONS AND ADDRESSES 


You may some day see clearly where you are in darkness now, and in 
the clearer light of heaven thank Him for that act which almost excites 
rebellious feelings now. — Rev. Robert Forbes, D. D. 


THE MAIDEN, GOD’S FLOWER. 

REV. WM. RAINEY BENNETT, B. D. 

It sometimes happens that the sun arises with unusual splendor. In 
golden armor it battles with the forces of darkness and sends them 
flying beyond the western hills. Each leaf hangs stuck with diamond 
dewdrops, each drop burning like the sun himself. Men said, this is a 
fair day, and hope and joy beamed from their eyes. All nature was 
aglow with light. The little birds caught the day spirit and sang their 
sweetest carols. The sky, blue and June-like, laid its warm ear close 
to earth to hear if it were in tune. O, what is so rare as a morn in 
June. But before the morning was scarce begun, a cloud arose. It 
came up very fast, and grew thicker and thicker. The day grew darker 
and darker. Not one gleam of gold could push through that stormcloud 
to give man one ray of hope. The day became very dark. Then came 
the storm — terrible, furious. It whirled through a valley of oaks, and 
writhed and twisted their great trunks and branches until all was 
waste and desolation. There was much mourning and crying in that 
valley of strong oaks. 

Once there was a life that came in like a new born day. It brought 
golden light into one home, yea many homes. There was never a day 
in June so rare as that bright life. It gave hope and happiness to every- 
one. The birds sang merrier for her presence. Flowers seemed to give out 
their sweetest perfume for her pleasure. It was easy to be good when 
she was near. All was happiness, all was light. 

But the storm arose suddenly. There was no warning but a heart- 
pain, sharp as a lightning flash. Then all grew dark. Great hearts were 
torn and mangled. Strong men broke down and cried. It was like a 
battlefield of wounded, a valley of oaks after the storm. It is all lost, we 
say. But wait! That bright sunlit morn gave hope to a little seed. 
It took root and grew into a vine with luxuriant foliage and covered over 
ugly wounds on those strong oaks. So this morning-life has started to 
growing a seed of love, and it will cover over the wounded hearts with 
its healing leaves of memory. And, as the oak looks richer with the ivy 
clinging to it, so our lives will be made richer and sweeter because of 
the clinging love-memory of our little girl. 

The wounds will not heal. The forest will never rise. The heart 
will always bear the scars. It will always cry. I do not tell you not to 
weep; let love have its way. If love says for the tears to flow, let them 
flow. Love knows best. Love will find a way where reason will fail. 
But bear just a word of reason. 

Nothing can be lost. This is a law of physics. If no energy can be 
lost, how can love, sweetness and purity be lost? There was real worth 
in this young life — worth to her home, worth to the Sunday school. 


DEATH OF THE YOUNG 


491 


worth to the “Helping Hands,” worth to the C. E. society, worth to the 
public schools; and I say it with all seriousness, worth to God. If there 
is anything earthly that would picture her character it is sunlight .and 
roses. If there is anything heavenly that portrays her nature, it is love. 
What more does earth need? Wbat more can heaven demand? Sun- 
light, roses and love — they give joy to man; they will give joy to God. 
Her life has been a blessing to us, though it was so very short, but 

** ’Tis better to have loved and lost. 

Than never to have loved at all.” 

— Rev. Wm. Rainey Bennett, B. D. 


A YOUNG GIRL’S DEATH. 

HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

It is a good thing to me, in looking into life, to see how that which 
is probably the sweetest and most intense point of human experience 
lies in the affections that surround childhood. There is nothing that is 
stirred more than the human heart — the father and mother heart — to 
care for the utter helplessness of childhood. There are no affections 
more disinterested, more helpful, more beautiful to behold, more needed 
by the object, and more fruitful in the outplay, than those loves which 
bind strength to weakness and want. Life is full of it. It is a light 
kindled in every house. 

It is a good thing, therefore, to me, that the two or three only 
instances recorded of the great displeasure, of the visible and striking 
excitement, which Christ Jesus manifested upon earth, was in connec- 
tion with little children. The thought, the feeling, was that they had 
been disparaged in his presence. Where they desired to come to Him, 
or where their parents desired to bring them to Him, and the disciples 
thought it was not worth while to trouble Him about little children as 
long as there were grown folks around about Him, and put aside the 
little children from His ministration — from their expression of love to 
Him, and their recipience of love from Him — at that point it was that 
His heart flamed out. He was grieved. He was offended. It was evi- 
dently one of those extraordinary displays of feeling to which at times 
He was subject in His earthly career. 

Looking a great many times into the whole teaching of the Scrip- 
tures, I have come to feel that in the great Kingdom of God children 
bear a part of which we have but a very faint conception; and that 
their disappearance from earth, although it brings so much pain to the 
parental heart, is generally thought very little of in the economic world. 
The child is not a producer. Children are not known on the Exchange; 
they are not known in the market; they are not known in the ways of 
strife; they are not known in any way as a power or as an element of 
success in life. They die, and we say, “What a pity! How sad it will 
be for the mother! How hard it will be for the father!” and then they 
are as a leaf that has dropped ultimately from the stem, and wavered 
through the air, and rested on the ground. They were babes, they were 


402 


FUNERAL SERMONS AND ADDRESSES 


Children, and therefore they were of little account. If it had been a 
man, it would have been regarded differently. If it had been one who 
was known in human affairs, if it had been a counter of money, men 
would have said, “Oh, what a loss to society!” but it was only a little 
child. 

Now, this feeling of the Saviour in regard to little children is like 
the feeling of the mother and father heart; but men’s feeling of the 
unvalue of little children as measured by what they are worth to the 
affairs of society is akin to that of the disciples when they would hinder 
little children from coming to Christ; and my thought of the freshness, 
the unperverted, pure, royal nature that is in little children (I mean not 
the potential evil which is in them, but that in them which when the 
body drops away, discloses itself at once in the Kingdom of Heaven in 
beauty and in rare angelic perfection) — to my thought that element in 
childhood flames forth in the other world with a conspicuous and 
importance which we know very little of. It seems that there is a pro- 
vision fcr it. It seems that there is a kingdom in the other life for 
children. It seems that there are appointed guardians for them here and 
that they are receiving welcome there. I take it that they as much 
enlarge their spheres of experience and of receptivity in going forth 
as little children as we do ours in going forth as adults, and that they 
are better off by as much as heaven in better than this world — not, how- 
ever, in the vague and general sense in which we are accustomed to 
speak of it saying, “We have escaped temptation and sickness and 
various evils.” That is all true; but I mean that there is a special 
summer in heaven, that there is a ripening spot in the other life, into 
which children go, where they are peculiarly blessed, and that all the 
touches and hints of revelation, all the glances, as it were, of Christ’s 
eye in looking at them, and His whole mode of teaching about them, 
indicate that their ascent to glory is with peculiar blessings. 

So I give forth my children into clouds that are both within and 
without rosy with light. I look upon the upgoing of the little child’s 
spirit as perhaps the rarest and sweetest sight that the angel beholds in 
heaven. The entrance of these little unstained creatures into the pres- 
ence of the dear Father of all — as it were, their laps from heaven, and 
the small segment of the circle which they describe before they light 
upon the boughs there — this I look upon as one of the most joyous ele- 
ments of half disclosed truth. 

If it be a great blessing to have our children called, received, and 
rendered safe, and advanced in honor, we ought not to look upon the 
earthware side of these phenomena — certainly not in such a way as to 
quite eclipse the brightness, the blessedness, the beauty and the glad- 
ness of the other and heavenly side — that of the departure of little chil- 
dren. For with us is the earth earthly; with us is the dishonored body, 
which in the battle is overthrown; and the little child, before ever it 
has entered the list, is outrun, as it were, and beaten. This part of it is pre- 
sented to our bodily sense; but the other, that they are borne into the 
bosom of Christ, that they are lifted up into the eternal smile, that they are 
the peculiarly elect of the heavenly life, that they have come to those 


DEATH OF THE YOUNG 


493 


thrones and honors and to that blessedness which belong in heaven in 
a special way to little ones — this we hardly enough believe in to realize 
it in the time of our distress. 

And yet, in a land where the monarch had it in his power to confer 
honor and distinction, every household would be glad to have the king 
send a messenger, saying, “Send thy child, thy son who is coming of 
age.” Every household would be glad to have the queen send for a maid 
of honor to be in her presence. There is not a sill in the kingdom that 
when the messenger’s feet crossed it, would not vibrate with gladness 
to have the royal mark of favor shown by calling to the court any child. 
And the house would not be empty because the child had gone forth; 
it would be luminous because the light of its gladness and its honor 
would shine back and fill the house again. 

So, when our dear Lord sends to us, and is making up His heavenly 
company of our elect ones, when He first calls one and then another up 
to His presence, giving them an honor which no earthly monarch ever 
knew how to confer, is there no element of joy, no backward shining 
light, no gladness for the child, no gladness for Christ’s sake, no sense 
of the divine goodness to us, no blessing in our loss — which is not loss? 
There is nothing lost. Much is changed, much is transferred, but noth- 
ing is lost; much is gained. He who plants such seed as children are, in 
such soil as heaven is, and under such a sun as God, is planting for a 
glorious harvest; and if the husbandman waits patiently from spring to 
autumn to see what he has planted, and what it has brought forth, how 
much more patiently ought we to wait to see what shall be the outcome 
of that which we have planted in the heavenly soil! 

And so, with such thoughts as these, I do not suppose we can entirely 
and at once cure the sad and suffering wounds which the sudden dis- 
ruption of our children from us makes; but certainly it gives to our sor- 
rows a new direction, much healing and much comfort intermingled. 
Meanwhile, my dearly beloved, you are God’s children, and He has not 
come to you in judgment; He has come to you in great mercy. The 
royal Hand has taken the darling, and has taken it not out of light into 
darkness, and not out of light into twilight, but out of small joys begun 
into wonderful joys; out of the humility and limitation of an earthly 
household into the largeness and the beauty and the fulness of the house 
where God is and angels are, and where sweet communion from age to 
age is made up of these little precious saints. The best saints, I take it, 
are gathered as pearls from the bottom, into the Kingdom of our God. — 
Henry Ward Beecher. 


“FOR OF SUCH IS THE KINGDOM.”— MATT. 19:14. 

REV. F. T. ROUSE. 

It is a time of joy when a daughter comes to the home. Not even 
a son can take the place of the sweet girl child that wins her way into 
the heart of her father and mother. I have sometimes thought that the 


494 


FUNERAL SERMONS AND ADDRESSES 


girl wins the father most; but for father or mother it is a blessed day 
that brings the little girl so sweet, so dependent, so affectionate, so full 
of love and care. 

Eleven years is long enough to bind the tendrills very tight about 
the heart. The various stages of early childhood have been passed 
through one by one. The long dresses, the short dresses, the learning to 
sit up, to creep, to laugh and prattle; the difficult words one by one; the 
learning to walk; the first toys; the inevitable doll, and dolls. The first 
sober thoughts — the time when the little one instead of being altogether 
helped, becomes a little helper; the days of those questions, and thoughts, 
those long, long thoughts; for a child’s mind is deep like the sea. 
Sometimes she will come in with a question that will almost startle from 
its deeper meaning. 

A true child’s mind turns naturally to God. Prayer is as natural 
to a child as breathing. God is not far away to a child. The pure in 
heart see God, and so the pure child sees Him, better than we who have 
become more complex in our motives. We have much to learn from a 
child. Jesus took the little one as a type of what one should be who 
would enter the kingdom of heaven. It is the type of trustful purity 
and simplicity. 

This is one of the lessons that childhood brings us, and if we can- 
not keep the child we can keep the lesson. I sometimes think that every 
life, however short, has had its mission. God certainly does not measure 
things by years. He will paint in frost beautiful pictures upon the 
window pain; and then the light of the sun will in a moment melt it 
away. And yet the picture had a purpose and fulfilled its mission. The 
beautiful flowers, the sweet rose bud nods its modest head kissed by the 
dew, and blushing at the sight of rosy dawn, then it is picked, or if it 
matures, its leaves fall; yet no one will say the rose has lived in vain. 

This little life has not been in vain, it has been worth more than 
all it cost, even if we take into account this last cost of sorrow. The 
poet is true when he says: “It is better to have loved and lost, than 
never to have loved at all.” — Rev. F. T. Rouse. 


III. DEATH IN MATURITY AND OLD AGE 


“THE MEMORY OF THE JUST IS BLESSED.”— 

PROV. 10:7. 

REV. S. PARKES CADMAN, D. D. 

We pensively mark the lapse of time by the vanishing of faces dear 
and the hushing of familiar voices, but our sad abstraction is happily 
broken by the reflection that the day of which the prophet spoke has 
dawned for our fellow laborer; “that day when the Lord of Hosts shall 
be for a crown of glory and for a diadem of beauty unto His faithful 
servants.” 

The treasure of discipline and of love were found in the life of this 
honored citizen. He obtained without seeking it, an impressive weight 
among his fellow men because of the strength of an unusual and forci- 
ble character; a character which never coveted ease, but deliberately 
chose the steep and rugged path where duty led the way and useless 
luxuries dare not invade. The efforts thus involved were essential to 
the fibre of his being, and through incessant devotion to the daily round 
he came to his proper upward motion to the higher life where he could 
not be swerved from that kingly road, that “way of the just which shineth 
brighter and brighter unto the dawning of the day.” 

Unsuspected depths of hidden but sincere and steadfast love were 
in this man, and they mediated between the church he served and the 
home he cherished. In his home, that innermost circle, he loved his own 
well and wisely and he loved them to the end. Constant ministry shone 
and was reflected there in unwonted grace and thoughtful care. 

If I were asked to mention the outstanding feature of his character, 
I should unhesitatingly reply: “It was fidelity.” In things great or small, 
with exactitude and scrupulous honor, he kept the faith. The sense 
of obligation to his trusts was vital, and it helped to make him prudent 
in promise, but sure in performance. His profession as a Christian gen- 
tleman was not apt to dissolve into mere rhapsodies; he did not escape 
the present world and its burdens by postponing essential things to the 
eternal state beyond. He chose the better part and was “diligent in 
business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord.” 

Conscience and intellect united in him upon one object, the truth 
as he understood the truth. This attribute was rooted in him, and he 
could not suffer it to be removed, whatever else was shaken. One does 
not claim that its manifestations w r ere in a state of perfection. He would 
have scorned such a claim or anything approaching it. Indeed, he often 
did and advocated that which was opposed to his personal taste and 
desire, because he believed it necessary to larger interests. Such 
behavior had a singular power over men, whether they agreed with him 
or not. His valuables were not on landlocked waters, but floating on the 


496 


FUNERAL SERMONS AND ADDRESSES 


deeps of virtue and honesty that stretch toward a just and righteous 
God. 

Let us remember our beloved friend for what he was, but let 
not forget that he owed all he was to Another, to the greatest Friend 
there is. I know he would wish me to say little, but he certainly would 
wish me to say this: 

“Thou, O Christ, art all I want, 

More than all in Thee I find.” 

He knew and we all knew, that we cannot live a worthy life in our 
own strength, but we can humbly and heartily trust in our Redeemer 
and Lord, as he did. 

The scenery of that immortal hope we can conceive of in a measure 
from the elements of our mortal life. Memory’s peaceful retrospect is 
there; the satisfaction of conscience when duty has been done is there; 
reason delights there in its perception of the truth, and there affection 
feels as never before the glow of sympathy and inspiration. Combining 
these into one full thought glorified by the eternal presence of God and 
by whatever other resources the great reality beyond contains, we sur- 
render our friend and all our loved ones to this vision of the highest 
which “the pure in heart” have obtained. 

So let the ripe fruit fall. He goes beyond to beckon us, and with 
him and all who are of the assembly of the Church of the Firstborn, we 
may finally take our appointed place. For they are there; they who 
were once mourners here below and knew then as we still know that 
the day’s burden is no dream. Now, transformed, enriched and ready 
for all God’s perfect will, they offer their ransomed energies to a flaw- 
less and eternal service which is perfect freedom and unalloyed delight. 

“Then said he, ‘I am going to my Father’s; and though with great 
difficulty I have got hither, yet now I do not repent me of all the troubles 
I have been at to arrive where I am. My sword I give to him that 
shall succeed me in my pilgrimage, and my courage and skill to him that 
can get it. My marks and scars I carry with me, to be a witness for me 
that I have fought His battles who shall now be my Redeemer.’ ” 

“When the day that he must go hence was come, many accompanied 
him to the riverside, into which, as he went, he said, “Oh, Death! where 
is thy sting?” And as he went down deeper he said, “Oh, Grave! where 
is thy victory?” So he passed over, and all the trumpets sounded for 
him on the other side.” — Rev. S. Parkes Cadman, D. D. 


D. L. MOODY’S MOTHER. 

(When Mrs. William R. Moody had concluded her song, “Crossing 
the Bar,” at the funeral of Mrs. Moody, Mr. D. L. Moody rose from his 
place with the family, and, bearing in his hands the old family Bible and 
a worn book of Devotions, came forward. Standing by the body of his 
mother, he said:) 


DEATH IN MATURITY AND OLD AGE 


437 

“It is not the custom, perhaps, for a son to take part on such an 
occasion. If I can control myself, I would like to say a few words. 
It is a great honor to be the son of such a mother. I do not know where 
to begin; I could not praise her enough. In the first place, my mother 
was a very wise woman. In one sense she was wiser than Solomon — 
she knew how to bring up her children. She had nine children, and they 
all loved their home. She won their hearts, their affections; she could 
do anything with them. 

“Whenever I wanted real sound counsel, I used to go to my mother. 
I have traveled a good deal, and seen a good many mothers, but I never 
saw one who had such tact as she had. She so bound her children to her 
that it was a great calamity to have to leave home. She won her family 
to herself. 

“And there was another thing remarkable about my mother. If 
she loved one child more than another no one ever found it out. 

“I thought so much of my mother, I cannot say half enough. That 
dear face! There was no sweeter face on earth. Fifty years I have 
been coming back, and was always glad to get back. When I got within 
fifty miles of home I always grew restless, and walked up and down the 
car. It seemed to me as if the train would never get to Northfield. For six- 
ty-eight years she has lived on that hill, and when I came back after dark 
I always looked to see the light in mother’s window. When I got home 
last Saturday night — I was going to take the four o’clock train from New 
York and get here at twelve: I had some business to do; but I suppose 
it was the good Lord that sent me; I took the twelve o’clock train and got 
here at five — I went in to my mother. I was so glad I got back in time 
to be recognized. I said, ‘Mother, do you know me?’ She said, ‘I guess 
I do!’ I like that word, that Yankee word ‘guess’! The children were all 
with her when she was taking her departure. At last I called, ‘Mother, 
mother.’ No answer. She had fallen asleep; but I shall call her again 
by-and-bye. Friends, it is not a time of mourning. I want you to under- 
stand we do not mourn. We are proud that we had such a mother. We 
have a wonderful legacy left us. 

“Widow Moody’s light has burned on that hill for fifty-four years 
to my knowledge. It has been burning there for fifty-four years in that 
one room. We built a room for her where she could be more comfor- 
table, but she was not often there. There was just one room where she 
wanted to be. Her children were born there, her first sorrow came there, 
and that was where God had met her. That is the place she liked to 
stay, where her children liked to meet her, where she worked and toiled 
and wept. 

“Her seven boys were like Hannibal, whose mother took him to the 
altar and made him swear vengeance on Rome. She took us to the 
altar and made us swear vengeance on whiskey, and everything that was 
an enemy to v.he human family: and we have been fighting it ever since, 
and will to the end of our days: 

“What more can I say? You have lived with her and you know about 
her. I want to give you one verse, her creed. When everything went 
against her this was her stay — ‘My trust is in God.’ ^ 


498 


FUNERAL SERMONS AND ADDRESSES 


“I do not know — of course, we do not know — whether the departed 
ones are conscious of what is going on on earth. If I knew that she 
was, I would send her a message that we are coming on after her. She 
went without a pain, without a struggle, just like a person going to sleep. 
And now we are to lay her body away to await His coming in resurrec- 
tion power. When I see her in the morning she is to have a glorious 
body. The body Moses had on the Mount of Transfiguration was a better 
body than God buried on Pisgah. When we see Elijah he will have a 
glorious body. That dear mother, when I see her again, is going to have 
a glorified body. (Looking at her face.) God bless you, mother; we 
love you still. Death has only increased our love. Good-bye for a little 
while, mother.” 


A GODLY MOTHER. 

Another sweet and and beautiful life has gone home; but she has 
left us a legacy. No one can look back on her memory without feeling 
that there is such a life as a God-filled life. The church, home, and society 
loses heavily when such a life takes its flight; but there are, however, 
many compensations. Her many friends feel that she is the happier, 
and we are all made better in heart and richer in soul when we reflect 
on her blessed life. 

No one who knew her could help but know that she had found the 
secret to the happy life, but not every one knows the secret. All results 
require a cause. Figs do not grow on thistles. There is a center — a key- 
note — a dominant chord in each life, whether great or small. Discover 
that center and all else will follow readily. Listen for that keynote and 
you can hear all the harmonies and discords that float around it. You 
can tell where that life will come out, for you have found the star that 
leads and the power that guides. We know the center of her life was 
Christ. We believe she could say with Paul, ‘‘For me to live is Christ, 
to die is gain.” She had changed centers from self to Christ. This new 
centering of life’s affections must come to teach person’s life who lives. 

Her will had become His will; her life was not only like His life, but 
was His life; in Him she lived and moved and had her being. Her life 
was hid with God. She had discovered the abundant life and made it hers 
every day and hour. She had made the greatest discovery of the age, 
yea, of all ages — life — the opulence of a God-filled life. 

The best evidence of the virtue of Christianity is a Christian. When 
philosophy and science fail then life and love convince and convict. 
Let us be thankful that we can look back with a certainty on some lives 
redeemed and filled with love. 

She had a Christian face. It was calm, strong and hopeful. In this 
age of doubting and disquietude, it is a boon to find a face with all the 
lines of care erased. A confidence in God had filled her face with a look 
of calm hopefulness. A pure heart and a clear conscience had given 
her a countenance beaming with love which looked one square in the face 
— ah! looked into the heart, having the effect of a loving rebuke which 
virtue always gives to vice. 


DEATH IN MATURITY AND OLD AGE 


499 


She had a Christian language. A word has many meanings — as many 
as there are lips that speak it. She had that fine personality that softens 
words — a love that melted out all sounds harsh and cutting. Those who 
know say that never an unkind word fell from her lips. She had that 
fine Christian sense of always selecting the right word at the right time 
— an art almost lost to the world — an art many never learn. 

She had a Christian courage. I mean by this that she had reached 
the state of the “affirmative intellect.” It was not a factor with her 
what others did; she had the courage to do what she thought was right. 
Her conduct had gone beyond the point of being swayed by what was 
popular or customary. Duty was the goal, and love led the way. She 
had further, the culture of unselfishness which lost self in the service 
of others. She suffered least from her own pain and most from the 
sorrows of others. 

She was a Christian mother. There are many mothers who are not* 
They care for their own as do the tigers of the jungle, and their sym- 
pathies stop with their own. Divine motherhood is as wide as the cry 
of human need. It mothers all children. There are some persons in 
wiiose presence we all become children. A sweet, caressing influence 
floats from their soul like the perfume from a rose, which seems to still 
us and lull us to sleep. Such was the feeling that stole over me when 
she was near — I was home again. 

This mother had a Christian hope and fearlessness which is worth 
all the wealth of the world at that moment when the life forces begin to 
slip away like sand through the fingers. Death through her living Lord 
had been robbed of all its terrors. It w r as not a black cloud which blinded 
sight; she saw with the soul’s eye. To her death was not a door which 
shut out life, but one which opened into larger life. It was a home- 
going. It was a clear call; a clasping of both hands long loved and lost 
awhile. 

She lived a beautiful life and died a beautiful death. May she have 
the two-fold resurrection — one into the great life beyond with her Lord 
and her loved ones, the other in the many lives that remain here on 
earth, blessed and purified by her influence. 


WHAT A CHRISTIAN CARRIES INTO THE NEXT 

WORLD. 

REV. VICTOR FRANK BROWN. 

It is indeed a rare event in any city, when friends can gather as we 
do today at the bier of one who has lived so long a time as to have 
passed the four score and four-year period — and in all of whose life there 
has been recognized only the highest worth. Men whom the poisoned 
arrow of gossip has not sought at one time or another for a target, are 
few. But our brother, who lies before us today, lived a life that was 
entirely and absolutely above reproach. 

In spite of the old saying, “Shrouds have no pockets,” there are 
some things which God permits us to carry into the next world, and these 


500 


FUNERAL SERMONS AND ADDRESSES 


things are the exact equivalents in life of the opportunities and talents 
that God has given us. It is true that we must all he empty-handed in 
the casket, and yet it is far from the truth to say that one must appear 
a pauper before the throne of Christ, when the “bright angel of Death” 
calls us to the inheritance of the blessed. Did not Jesus say: “Lay up 
for yourselves, treasures in heaven?” 

This, our brother tried most faithfully to do, and, so far as human 
judgment can determine, his share of heavenly riches, is now abundant. 
Into the next world he carried with him. 

I. A beautiful character. 

II. An overflowing and happy disposition. 

III. A triumphant faith in God and love for Christ and His interests 
among men. 

IV. The ardent love of his life-long companion, and the high esteem 
of his friends. You all recognize our aged brother as one of your best 
citizens, and why? Pray, let me answer that question. 

It was because he put something into life, the exact equivalent of 
which found expression in his sunny temper, his diligent devotion to 
duty, his ardent love for the church, and his high esteem for the obliga- 
tions of the brotherhood of man. 

And what did he put into life? What was the price he paid for these 
treasures which he transferred from earth to heaven? Again I want 
the privilege of answering. It was, first, the pure coin of faith in God. 

It was, second, devotion to the church, and that for which the 
church stands. 

The things which will enrich us in glory and which will embellish 
our memory after we are gone, are those which, by the Divine law of 
Christian growth, we have attained through great cost. 

Let me urge upon you then, today this sacred lesson, learned from 
the beautiful life of one brother’s eighty-four years sojourn on earth, 
more than two-thirds of which has been spent in your midst to lay up 
treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt and 
where thieves do not break through and steal. 

Sometimes we all must sever the ties that bind us to this world. 
In that hour would you have your dying pillow soft, and your passing 
hour a triumphant entrance into the majestic presence of Jehovah, the 
King of Kings, and the Lord of Lords? 

Names that live long after those who bore them are dead, are not 
those chiseled in marble and granite, but those which God has exalted 
because they have proven their right to immortality. 

If in life we fail to exchange our abilities and our wealth for the 
coin of eternal riches, we must expect that the shroud in which we shall 
be laid to rest, shall contain no price with which to purchase a cherished 
memory among men. 

This quiet and solemn hour today is most certainly a fit time for 
earnest thinking on the part of many who are making life an arid desert 
instead of transforming it into a rich and abundant garden of fruits that 
shall abide. — Rev. Victor Frank Brown. 


IV. DEATH OF PERSONS OF PROMINENCE. 

A DISTINGUISHED CITIZEN AND PHILANTROPIST. 

BISHOP EDWIN H. HUGHES. 

Years ago the friend who has just gone from us and myself went 
together to a funeral service. As we returned homeward he remarked 
to me: “What was said today concerning Dr. was all true. Noth- 

ing was overstated. I liked that feature.” Then after a moment he 
added: “If you should speak at the services when I pass away, do not 
say too much. I have had my faults, and I have known them and strug- 
gled against them. I have tried through life to do my duty. Yet I fear 
there is not much that can be said.” How much should be said now I 
am sure he would leave to my own sincere judgment. His underlying 
plea was for frankness in funeral disclosure. Therefore, I shall try to 
speak as if he stood here with his keen eyes fixed on my face. 

No eulogy of this departed friend would be complete that did not 
start with the word thq^Q^ghness. That quality worked its way through 
all his life. Whatever he did was well done; that opens the secret of 
his career. He had small patience with any service that was scamped 
and slovenly. He himself obeyed, and he wanted others to obey, the 
Bible command: “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy 
might.” 

In the more sacred associations of life this spirit of thoroughness 
was translated into the spirit of loyalty. Consequently he was deeply 
devoted in his affiliations. Toward the nation this quality flowered into 
a fine patriotism. 

That spirit of thorough loyalty entered his domestic life. Prominent 
though he was, even to being the second mayor of this beautiful city, he 
was primarily a man of the home. He had a splendid passion of father- 
hood. He would have died for his children. He bore with him a tender 
memory of those whom he had lost and whom, thank God, he has now 
found again. He simply did not know how to walk the sinuous path of 
the diplomatist. Like light, he always traveled in straight lines. The 
ends that other men gained by round-about, and perhaps righteous, 
methods, he sought in absolute directness. He saw things with clearness, 
believed in them with ardor, uttered them with fearlessness, and labored 
for them with intensity. 

I will not be so bold as to enter into the sacred region of his hus- 
bandhood. I will only say that I had the privilege of repeated presence 
and prayer in his home when the companion of more than half a cen- 
tury of happy married life came near, so near, to the line that he has now 
crossed. When physicians gave up hope he never faltered; and the 
strong hand of his love drew his wife back to the shores of strength. 
His loved ones can never doubt his affection. He leaves behind the 
beautiful benediction of husbandhood and fatherhood. 


502 


FUNERAL SERMONS AND ADDRESSES 


And when his thoroughness passed out into the larger field of 
human endeavor, it took on the form of a vast serviceableness. Men 
say that he was a philanthropist; and men say well. But let us not 
make the mistake of thinking that he was only a financial philanthropist. 
It is a large temptation among the wealthy to discharge their obligation 
by the easy writing of a check. He accepted the doctrine of Christian 
stewardship; and no man that I have ever known lived it out more 
truly. He had the vision of the future. Once we walked together along 
a mountain path. A small tree had fallen across the way. I stepped 
over it and passed on. Speaking with no tone of rebuke in his voice and 
as if he were stating a common principle of his life, he said, as he 
removed the obstruction: “I believe it is a good plan to make it just as 
easy as possible for those who are to come after you.” That deed was 
characteristic of his care over all the paths of our human life. He 
wanted to serve the coming people. He kept turning every day inci- 
dents into lessons of far-reaching service. In the Adirondacks we stood 
once beside the stump of a great pine tree. The hollowed center had 
given room for a slight amount of soil which had gathered either from the 
decay of the wood or from the bearing in of earth by the birds or the 
breezes. The adventurous tamarack had chosen this stump’s heart as 
a place of growth and had pushed itself boldly up to the height of six 
feet. It occurred to me that in trying to grow thus upon another tree’s 
foundation the tamarack had severely limited itself. Its tendrils soon 
struck the slowly decaying wood and could pierce no deeper. A wind- 
breath or a hand-push would dislodge the plucky sapling from its queer 
rooting. I remarked to Mr. Speare that the tamarack had made a mis- 
take. He saw more deeply and said: ‘‘No! The old tree after a while 
will only enrich the soil for the benefit of the younger.” May I not say 
that he has done just that! He himself lived out those fine parables of 
the mountains he loved. If the Saviour’s word be true, that greatness 
has its root in service, then I affirm unwaveringly that here lies the body 
of a great man. 

This is his past. What of his present and future? My friends, he 
has been a believer in Christ. Long ago he heard Him say: ‘‘In my 
Father’s house are many mansions. I go to prepare a place for you. 
I will come again and receive you unto myself.” The promise of the 
Saviour has now been fulfilled. — Bishop Edwin H. Hughes. 


JOSEPH PARKER: IN MEMORIAM. 

SIR W. ROBERTSON NICOLL, D. D. 

I am here today in obedience to Dr. Parker’s last and repeated 
request, and no other constraint would have induced me to speak at such 
a time as this. I know, however, that I speak for all, when I say that it 
is with songs of praise that we remember the dear father in God who 
has now entered the blessed and everlasting rest. We cannot but mourn 
that he has left us. We mourn as Christians; the whole Christian 
church mourns for one of the greatest preachers Christ ever called. We 


DEATH OF PERSONS OF NOTE AND PROMINENCE 503 

\ 

mourn as Free Churchmen; for we cannot but feel today how rich we 
have been, and how poor we are becoming. “My father, my father! the 
chariot of Israel, and the horsemen hereof.” Only if he could speak, 
with what lofty and generous passion he would rebuke our misgivings, 
and tell us to cease from man! “Moses, my servant is dead . , . 
now therefore arise.” 

We rejoice that he has been delivered from his sufferings, that he 
has been unclothed from the weary weight of the body. About the mid- 
dle of his illness, when he thought he might recover, he said one day, 
“If I were to die, I should have finished all my work, accomplished all my 
plans, fulfilled all my ambitions. Yes,” he said meditatively, “my life is 
mysteriously complete. One thing only I might do: I should like to 
write a life of the Saviour.” “Yes,” I replied, “and you have known 
no loss of power and influence.” He dwelt on this with deep gratitude, 
and who can wonder, for few were more alive to the comedy and 
tragedy of life. He had seen so many suns go down while it was yet 
day. He had seen the youth faint and grow weary, and the young men 
utterly fall. It is so rarely that we can say of a human life, “It is 
finished.” So many toilers die on the verge, as it seems, of their achieve- 
ment. They must be content to put the unfinished work and the unful- 
filled hopes into God’s hand again. And almost always in old age there 
is a period of abatement and decay. Few gifts of nature or fortune keep 
their brilliancy unimpaired by time. Even the gifts of grace for achieve- 
ment often turn in the end into gifts for endurance. That endurance is 
indeed a test. Some find it hard to subside into obscurity with grace 
and content; some find it easy. The trial never came to our dear 
friend. He was at the zenith of his power and fame when he last stood 
in this pulpit. 

“As I have grown older,” he said more than once, with significant 
emphasis, “I have become more evangelical. I have preached Christ 
crucified.” This was his boast — that he had been a faithful Gospel min- 
ister. Of the intellectual splendor of his preaching, of its indescribable 
originality, I will not try to speak. Who can analyze its magic, its 
wizardry, its enchantment? When we think of it, we are tempted faith- 
lessly to say that as a preacher his like or equal will come no more. I 
leave that, to emphasis the burning earnestness of his evangelicalism. 

He himself wrote in his latest book: “Concerning them which are 
as i ee p — that is what we want to know. We want to know all they can 
tell us. We are hardly content with being told, we want to see it all, 
and take fellowship with them that sing a new song. They will come by 
and by. It is all arranged. Do not suppose they are forgotten. God 
sends for the people just as He thinks heaven can admit them. There 
is no haste there, no crowding, no rushing, no clamor. Here is a man 
who has something to say concerning them which are asleep. He is 
welcome, thrice welcome. He brings us news from a far country. We 
have dreams and visions, and many a golden fancy, but we want to hear 
those who can tell us anything that can cheer our hearts. Give him 
time, let him take his own way in telling the tale. He will warm our 
hearts presently. Now, chief of the saints, mightiest of the stalwarts. 


504 


FUNERAL SERMONS AND ADDRESSES 


Paul, we are prepared to hear concerning them which are asleep, the 
old friends, the young folks, the little angels, and those who are growing 
old in heaven. Only there is no old age there.” — Sir W. Robertson 
Nicoll, D. D. 


ON THE DEATH OF A NOTED EDITOR. 

When I learned of the departure of Mr. C , there came quickly 

to mind bright characteristics which had appealed to me through twenty 
years of intimate friendship. And the first I name was a high and 
reverent thought of life. Perhaps New England shows its keen ana 

masterful spirit in nothing more clearly than in just that. Mr. C 

came from a trained and devout New England family; among the very 
foremost of her thoughtful and consecrated spirits he was reared. He 
believed that life is a trust for a work. It would not have been like him 
to have said that very often, never prominently; but it was his to live 
it, and to show his estimate of a man’s mission by the deep furrows that 
he cut, by some precious seed which he scattered, by the care which he 
gave that which he had planted, that it might find root and grow and 
bear fruit. 

And there was wrapt up in this a remarkable thoroughness; in his 
early home life, all through his college life and afterwards in the editor’s 
chair, it was his to give his best powers to that which he undertook, 
and to do with his might what his hands found to do. While he gathered 
as best he could, and as every true nature does, from the resources which 
our civilization has given, he put these resources into his own life; they 
disappeared and came back again with the stamp and finish and spirit 
of his own manhood, to go out and do the work of the man who gave 
life and utterance to them. 

Another marked characteristic was a conscientious loyalty to what 
he believed to be right and true. This led him to seek a liberal educa- 
tion; this led him and strengthened him through all the years of his 
devotion to his college curriculum. He was not seeking honors, though 
he won many, and these could not but have been pleasant to him; but 
he was seeking that which was above honors, with which he could 
enrich his life and strengthen himself for bearing his part in enriching 
other lives. 

Another characteristic was perfect sincerity. Did it ever occur to 
you what an expressive origin that word has? It comes from two Latin 
words which signify “without wax,” pure honey; that is the thought 
that comes to me, in regard to my friend’s life. Surrounded by the dissi- 
pating and clouding influences of life, I never saw, in the twenty years 
of our acquaintance, the least wavering from that high and pure pur- 
pose, from that manly and sincere life which characterized him from the 
very first. To all this sincerity and purity of purpose, bearing the mark 
of the noble chevalier, “without fear and without reproach,” he added a 
courage, a persistency, hidden, but indomitable, planted in his life, and 
enduring even when the wasting hand of disease was laid upon him. 


DEATH OP PERSONS OF NOTE AND PROMINENCE 


505 


And then there was in it all and above it all that tender spirit of 
helpfulness, that grace of soul which forgets self and loses self and 
finds it again in the being of another. This made his home a place of 
joy; indeed, the very joy and spirit of his life. These friends who are 
here today, and many absent ones who would gladly bear their testi- 
mony, are thinking now of this ideal of a true home, where the thoughts 
and work of husband and "wife were one because they had the same 
bright visions which they sought to make realities. Truly, in the thought 
of Longfellow, she was “sitting by the fireside of his heart feeding its 
flame.” 

The father lived until the work of a holy ambition was accom- 
plished, until his boys had taken up the work of life as he longed to see 
them. But beyond his family and friends, his strong and noble thought 
was recognized among thinking and patriotic men, as that of a leader 
along the lines where humanity needs to be stirred and guided. And 
now to crown my humble tribute, let me give the incident which a few 
years ago brought to his host of friends a knowledge of the depths and 
tenderness of this “Great Heart.” With large sympathies and masterly 
ability by the appeal of his pen he rescued and raised a bereaved family 
above want, thus commemorating by the best possible method, — but 
the hardest — the noble life and heroic death of a fellow-journalist. This 
stands, perhaps, above even his most notable achievements, as the lofti- 
est ideal and the grandest work of his life. 

The work which an editor does is not usually attached to his name; 
in a sense he works down out of sight, among the hidden courses; but 
one with such a lofty purpose, one with such a reverent spirit, cares 
little for the glory of a name. His glory is in seeing the triumph of that 
to which his life was consecrated. Could we have looked in upon his 
heart and have read his spirit in its highest and noblest aspirations, in 
its loving trust, we should have found that in all the hopes which he 
cherished, and in the ends which he sought, he was filled with a deep 
and earnest desire to meet the approval of Him “whose we are and 
whom we serve.” 


DEATH OF A PHYSICIAN. ' 

REV. FREDERICK T. ROUSE. 

When a physician lays down his work it is not like the passing of an 
ordinary citizen. He has held a peculiar relation to the community. He 
is not simply a public agent for the transaction of business. He is a 
public friend. He deals not with the simple external goods of men. He 
holds the most sacred trusts. Under his hand the strong man lies down 
upon the scant couch in an unconscious sleep and trusts the thread of 
life to his careful skill. To him the woman tells her deepest secrets and 
trusts implicitly to his truth and honor. He watches over our entrance 
and exit from the world. He is a family friend. The sick one looks 
impatiently for his coming, and opens the eyes with trust and hope 
and gratitude into his cheerful thoughtful face. His people feel that they 
own him; he is subject to their call by day and night. And how many 


5C8 


FUNERAL SERMONS AND ADDRESSES 


I have heard say during the last few days with that peculiar conscious- 
ness of this close relationship, “He was our doctor.” 

There seemed to come from him something more than his medi- 
cine; it was his personality. The patient was better before the drops 
were administered. 

There was pathetic significance in the procession that has been com- 
ing to this church door during these last two days. Old and young, 
scantily clad and well to do, the workman and the employer, the student 
and the man of business. “He saved my life.” “He brought my child 
through.” “He was always willing, so gentle, so strong, so kind!” 

It is no wonder that in the naming of the disciples and early Chris- 
tian leaders of the New Testament, while they called one the zelot, one 
the publican, one the son of thunder, Luke, the physician, they called 
“the beloved.” And we realize something of the pathos, yet strength 
and comfort of the lonely Paul, physically weak and wrecked, when he 
told how all his followers save one had left him; we could guess who 
that one was. It was the physician, “Only Luke is with me.” 

How many times the pastor comes to the hush of a quiet room where 
perhaps an only daughter is breathing out her last with the strange 
sad struggle, and in the silent room with parents and family circle there 
is but one other, the doctor, whose very heart is bleeding because he 
cannot give back the precious life. 

A doctor need be a good man, a true man, shall I not say a godly 
man, for he is often the sole counsellor to the departing spirit. 

It was said in derision of the one we call the “Great Physician” that 
“He saved others, himself, he could not save.” 

Not in derision but in sad and wondering earnest w r e have repeated 
these same words during these days. While the fever has worked its 
dreaded way those who have been brought back to life by his skillful 
care would gladly have done their utmost to do for him what he had 
done for them, but they could not. Disease makes no discriminations 
and when it finds the fruitful soil and ready conditions it does its work 
for high and low, unskilled patient and skilful physician. 


When the mysteries of life are solved; when we come to know as 
we are known then and then only will the sad questions that we ask 
today be answered. We are in the midst of mystery. This event is 
not the only one that is unexplained. That this life should be cut off 
in its prime is but a part of the unexplained workings of law of nature, 
of Providence. Our only way is to do our best and trust. 

Our best prayer is this which I would put in your hearts and minds 
today: 


Lead kindly light amid the encircling gloom, 

Lead thou me on; 

The night is dark, and I am far from home. 

Lead thou me on; 

Keep thou my feet; I do not ask to see 
The distant scene; one step enough for me. 

— Rev. Frederick T. Rouse, 


DEATH OF PERSONS OF NOTE AND PROMINENCE 


507 


THE DEATH OF WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

JOSEPH COOK, D. D. 

Whom God crowns, let no man try to discrown. There lies dead on 
his shield in yonder street an unsullied soldier of unpopular reform, a 
spotlessly disinterested champion of the oppressed, the foremost orator 
of the English-speaking world in recent years, the largest and latest, 
let us hope not the last, of the Puritans, a servant of the Most High God, 
a man on the altar of whose heart the coals of fire were kindled by a 
breath from the Divine justice and tenderness. Wendell Phillips has 
gone, doubtless, to an incalculably great reward. He is with Garrison, 
and Sumner, and Lincoln now. Pie is in the company of Wilberforce 
and Clarkson. He has met Phocion, and Aristides, and Demosthenes, 
and Scipio, and the Roman Gracchi, and Howard, and John Brown, and 
Toussaint L’Ouverture. He is with Milton, and Cromwell, and Hampden, 
and Vane, and the Covenanters and Pilgrim Fathers, and the host of 
martyrs who, in every century, have laid down their lives that the 
dolorous and accursed ages might a little change their course. With the 
approval of this company, what cares he for our praise or blame? He 
cared little for it in life. Fifty years hence, history will not ask what 
Boston thinks of Wendell Phillips; but rather wiiat he thought of Boston. 
We cannot crown him; the memory of his career crowns our civilization. 

There are three periods in Mr. Phillip’s life — preparation, struggle, 
victory. His preparation extended from his birth — or rather from some , 
generations before it, for he inherited ancestral merit of the highest 
type — to the Boston mob of 1835. This period included his boyhood in 
the historic streets of Boston; his education in a cultured home and Bos- 
ton schools and Harvard university; his study of the law, and initial, 
reluctant practice of it. His struggle lasted thirty years, from 1835 to 
1865, — that is, from the time when he saw Mr. Garrison in danger of 
being murdered in your streets for anti-slavery opinions, to the day when 
it pleased Almighty Providence to eradicate slavery from our nation, 
His victory w r as in the last nineteen years of his life, in which he walked 
among us, not without occupation, indeed, but with his great purpose 
so thoroughly accomplished that he seemed lonely in his triumphant 
and peaceful days. 

Is it not fair to assert that, without the forty years of this reform- 
er’s influence from the platform, our civilization might possibly have 
sunk so low as to make a compromise with slavery? You affirm that 
slavery was not abolished in his way, that he w r as a disunionist for years, 
and that, perhaps, the bitterness of his attack on human bondage precipi- 
tated the conflict between the Ncjrth and the South. I maintain that 
slavery was abolished in Mr. Phillips’ way; for after 1861 he was a 
defender of the Union and of all the great measures of the North in the 
period of the war and of reconstruction. But as to the preceding period, 
are you sure that, if the brilliancy of his oratory, the intensity of his 
moral convictions, the weight of his conscience, had not been thrown into 
the scale, we should have been ready when secession showed its head 
to crush it? Are you certain that the statesmen who were safe men would 


508 


FUNERAL SERMONS AND ADDRESSES 


have brought us into that posture of soul in which such a degree of cour- 
age and insight became possible as to make the sacrifices of our war 
practicable by the will of the masses? 

It is sometimes said that Wesley and Whitefield, moving up and 
down the Atlantic coast as shuttles, wove together the sentiments of 
the thirteen colonies, and made union possible by creating a national 
spirit. We have no national daily journals, but we have national orators, 
men wTiose words are heard from Plymouth Rock to Golden Gate; and 
it is on a few men who reach the whole nation that we must depend 
for the unification of sentiment in great crises. It is true the press 
echoes itself, and so fills the land, and on the highest matters is substan- 
tially a unit; but sometimes the press is not as courageous as the plat- 
form. In most great crises of unpopular reform, the platform takes the 
initiative. Especially in the anti-slavery contest was it notoriously true 
that the abolitionist platform was vastly in advance of the press and of 
the pulpit. It was Mr. Phillips’ oratory, as I think, which imparted, more 
than any other weapon in the hands of one man, anti-slavery zeal to the 
North, and gave to the commonwealths which resisted the rebellion such 
moral preparation as made their victory in the Civil War possible. 

Boston mobbed Wendell Phillips. Let this city now reverently, 
proudly, and yet penitently build his monument. JEschines said that 
the character of a city is determined by the character of the men it 
crowns. This American reformer’s hands were clean from any stain 
of gold. He did not love place or pelf.' It was to plain living and high 
thinking that he consecrated his life. His gains were given away in 
silent philanthropy. It is certain that the last person whose interest he 
thought of was himself. That unspeakably sacred relation of his to an 
invalid wife — how dare we name it in public over his open grave except 
as we look into the coffin through tears? More than once he said: “She 
was my inspiration.” Was this the chief secret of his power? This man 
almost never unveiled to mortal gaze the holy of holies of his spirit, in 
which he dwelt alone with God. He said at Theodore Parker’s funeral: 
“Mine is not Parker’s faith. Mine is the old faith of New England.” I 
heard the authoress of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” say last night 
to a hushed assembly, “Wendell Phillips was orthodox of the orthodox.” 
He would not worship with the churches of Boston; but, in the darkest 
days of the struggle with slavery, he and some of those who were most 
nearly of his own heart were accustomed to meet on the Sabbath in 
private homes to observe the holy service of the Lord’s Supper. The 
faith of this servant of humanity was not a creed merely, but a life. 
“Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord; for they rest from their 
labors and their w r orks do follow them.” In this career the faith explains 
the works. By birth an aristocrat, by conviction a democrat, by faith a 
theocrat, Wendell Phillips was by Christian necessity a reformer. Let 
us look into our own duties through the lenses of these tears. We all 
are passing to the majority of souls. Lincoln, Sumner, Garrison, Emer- 
son, Phillips, have gone, — and we are going! God grant that each of us 
who are alive may sell his existence as dearly as this holy soul did his! 


DEATH OF PERSONS OF NOTE AND PROMINENCE 509, 

•> 

“Humanity sweeps onward. Where today the martyr stands, 

On the morrow crouches Judas, with the silver in his hands; 

Far in front the cross stands ready, and the crackling fagots burn, 
While the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe return 
To gather up the scattered ashes into history’s golden urn.” 

— Joseph Cook, D. D. 


THE MIRACLE OF DIVINE LOVE. 

PRESIDENT EDWARD D. EATON, D. D., LL. D. 

There are some men whose lifework, as w r e survey it, makes the 
impression of solid strength and of noble serviceableness. Like the moun- 
tains which rise above the surface of the earth, they abide steadfast in 
their place, enriching human existence. As the mountain purifies the air 
and sends it cooled and renewed over the heated plains and through the 
streets of the city to quicken fainting humanity, so such men purify the 
atmosphere of daily living and animate their fellows to a more courageous 
struggle against evil. As the mountains are reservoirs and fountains of 
water and send streams leaping down their rugged slopes with a momen- 
tum that carries them far over the earth, giving fruitfulness to distant 
lands, and bearing afar the world’s commerce, so such men are beneficent 
centers and sources of business activity whose influence is felt far beyond 
the circle of their personal acquaintance. 

These men are so strong and useful that we think of them as perma- 
nent forces in the world as we know it, and almost imagine that they will 
remain unshaken in the midst of inevitable change. But “surely the 
mountain, falling, cometh to naught.” The tooth of time gnaws it away, 
if some great convulsion does not shake it down. And the man of massive 
character beneficent influence yields, often suddenly, to the universal 
law of change and death. The place that knew him knows him no more 
forever. 

But though such a man must fall, he does not, thank God, like the 
mountain, “come to naught.” The strength of his personality, which is 
spiritual, is transferred to other spheres of service. It is our privilege 
to think of him as “a pillar in the Temple of our God,” to be shaken 
nevermore. However keenly we feel the loss of his counsel and his 
activity here, our thought enlarges to something of the measure of his 
new experience, as we say with reverent joy: 

“And doubtless unto thee is given 
A life that bears immortal fruit. 

In such great offices as suit 

The full-grown energies of heaven.” 

After the sun has set beyond the high mountains, as shadows 
gather in the valleys, we look up to the summits and behold the wondrous 
glow which shines and burns on the far heights, departing day trans- 
figured in glorious color. Thus when the noble life departs and we who 


510 


FUNERAL SERMONS AND ADDRESSES 


are left behind feel thickening about us the darkness of bereavement, we 
may look upward and see wrought for us, in the blending of beautiful 
memories and ardent hopes, the miracle of divine love, the earthly life 
of those we have revered and cherished set in the splendor of the promise 
of the life immortal. — President Edward D. Eaton, D. D., LL. D. 


A PROMINENT RELIGIOUS WORKER. 

I should neither voice your desires, I think, friends, nor be true to 
my own feelings, did I not make my words at this time very largely 
words of personal tribute. There are times when sermons and exhorta- 
tion are appropriate. But her life has already preached the sermon. 
And because she is silent she exhorts us with a persuasiveness that w'ords 
would not strengthen. We call her dead, but she is still in very vital 
relations to us. And because this is so I may be allowed to speak of 
her, not alone as a “departed friend,” in the common phrase of funeral 
address, I may have the privilege, I am sure, of speaking of her by the 
eld, familiar, loved name as I try to speak of what she has been to us all. 

As we think of her life we find many things that endeared her to us. 

I. She was a child of the city. 

II. She was a child of the church. 

The church of Christ has nothing in itself of which to boast. Its 
power, its fruitage is of God. And yet any church may be grateful, may 
take heart and go forward with good courage that has been instrumental 
in shaping such a life as hers. Freely she received from the spiritual 
strength of the church, and freely she gave to it, everything that she 
could, for its richest upbuilding. 

III. And then in charitable work outside of the church she was 
ready, and faithful, and increasingly useful. 

IV. We find, therefore, in the outer circumstances of her life and of 
her death, some things that bring her near to us at this time. But there 
w r as something in her inner life that has drawn us to her far more. One 
thing was this: She was among us as one who ministered. Her spirit 
was the spirit of service. 

She was not thinking of being ministered unto, but of ministering. 
We knew that what she was given to do would be faithfully and cheer- 
fully done, always, and we knew that it would be done upon principle 
instead of impulse, also. 

Her spirit was born of the Master’s love for her and her love for the 
Master. 

V. Then in these years when she has been most active among us, 
hers has been a growing character. It w r as a character sweetened and 
strengthened by a personal relation of loyalty and love to the Saviour 
Himself. It w r as a character that was built upon eternal foundations of 
truth and righteousness, and because of this it abides forever. It was a 
character that seemed to say, in every act, “I expect to pass this way 


DEATH OF PERSONS OF NOTE AND PROMINENCE 


511 


but onco, if therefore there be any kindness I can show, or any good thing 
I can do to my fellow human beings, let me do it now, let me not defer 
or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.” 

And this is our sorrow, friends, today, that she will not pass this way 
again. But should not joy mingle with sorrow that she has been per- 
mitted to pass this way once and to leave blessings in her pathway? 

May I not bring the congratulations as well as the sympathy of this 
company to these brothers because their sister, like the sister of Lazarus, 
chose the better part of life as she passed through it, — the part that can- 
not be taken away from her? May I not congratulate this mother, that 
to her was given a daughter of whom it might be said that in home and 
church and society we might apply the Master’s own words, “She hath 
done what she could.” And may I not suggest this to her Sunday school 
class, to the Christian Endeavor society, to the church and to all who 
loved her and are asking “Who can take her place?” may I not say, we 
must take her place; not to do her work, that is done — well done — but 
to do our work with the willingness, the fidelity, the cheerfulness, the 
loyalty to principle with which she did her work; this will honor her, 
this will rejoice her heart more than aught else we could do, when in 
God’s own time we shall meet with her again. 

Of her life we can say in the Master’s own words, “She was among 
us as one who served,” — “She hath done what she could.” And of her 
death, of this sudden, unexpected and to us inexpressibly sad passing of 
the loved daughter and sister and church member and Christian friend, 
we can only say this: 

“Through the deep silence of the moonless dark, 

Leaving no footprint of the path she trod. 

Straight as an arrow cleaving to its mark, 

Her soul went home to God. 

“Alas,” we cry, “she never saw the morn, 

But fell asleep outwearied with the strife.” 

Nay, rather she arose and met the Dawn 
Of Everlasting Life.” 


DEATH OF A CONGRESSMAN. 

(Eulogy Delivered by Hon. W. J. Bryan on Hon. George W. Houk of Ohio.) 

Mr. Speaker, George W. Houk was my friend, and while no words 
of mine can add peace to his ashes or sweetness to his sleep, I beg to 
place on record my tribute of affection and esteem. He was one of the 
first members of the Fifty-second Coongress whom I met after my own 
election, and the acquaintance which we formed while crossing Lake 
Superior together in the summer of 1891 ripened into an attachment 
which I enjoyed during his life, and which I cherish in memory now. 

He was a well-rounded man — one of the most complete men I ever 
knew. Some are specialists and excel in a particular line of work, or 
become famous because of some faculty abnormally developed. Not so 


512 


FUNERAL SERMONS AND ADDRESSES 


with Mr. Houk. He was not a one-sided man, nor a man with but one 
idea or one virtue. He so blended graces and good qualities, so combined 
the traits and characteristics which distinguish men as to be worthy of 
Antony’s compliment to Brutus: 

His life was gentle, and the elements 
So mixed in him, that Nature might stand up 
And say to all the world, “This was a man!” 

He found his inspiration at his fireside, and approached the ideal in 
his domestic life. He and his faithful wife, who was both his helpmeet 
and companion, inhabited as tenants in common that sacred spot called 
home, and needed no court to define their relative rights and duties. 
The invisible walls which shut in that home and shut out all else had 
their foundations upon the earth and their battlements in the skies. No 
force could break them down, no poisoned arrows could cross their top, 
and at the gates thereof love and confidence stood ever upon guard. 

in such a home the devoted parents reared a loving and dutiful 
family, and lived to see each son and daughter settle in life. And for- 
tune had so smiled upon the children that the father was as far removed 
from anxious care concerning them as his beautiful estate, Runnymede, 
overlooking the Miami valley, was removed from the noise and turmoil 
of the busy city with whose history his achievements were entwined. 
He did not leave to his children that doubtful blessing, a large fortune, 
but he left that priceless heritage which money cannot buy — a name 
without a stain, a reputation without a blemish. 

He was a man of surpassing geniality, and his cheerful face shed 
its radiance on all around him. It was my good fortune to sit by him 
during both terms of Congress, and I learned to look for the friendly 
salutation with which he greeted me every morning. He was a boon 
companion, and allowed no humor to escape him. He abounded in wise 
proverbs, in stories and in fables, and in all the affairs of life mingled 
with an artist’s skill the lively colors with the grave 

With him citizenship was a sacred trust as well as a privilege, and 
in the discharge of its responsibilities he exercised the most conscien- 
tious care. He was a politician in the sense that he was a student of the 
science of government, and a successful legislator in that he wrought 
into effective law the principles in which he believed. He possessed all 
the characteristics of the statesman. He reasoned out each proposition 
that came before him with a singleness of purpose and a desire to know 
the right. ........... 

He was honest, both with himself and with others. Not only was he 
incorruptible so far as pecuniary influences go, but he was true to his 
own convictions. His fidelity to others was insured by strict adherence 
to the injunction — 


To thine own self be true; 

And it must follow, as the night the day 
Thou canst not then be false to any man. 


DEATH OF PERSONS OF NOTE AND PROMINENCE 


513 


He was a brave man, and dared to follow his own judgment, even 
when it led him into disagreement with his party associates. His moral 
courage was developed to a high degree, and he was willing to assume 
responsibility for his every act, conscious of the rectitude of his purpose. 
His ability was recognized by his associates in Congress, and his opin- 
ions, based upon extensive research and wide experience, illuminated 
and ornamented by quotations from history, fiction and poetry, were 
sought after more and more as men knew him better. 

His life was one long journey upward, without a halt or backward 
step. His success was not meteoric; he won his way step by step, and 
pitched his tent on higher ground at the end of each day’s travel. For 
more than sixty-five years his home was at Dayton, Ohio. There he 
attended school, taught school, read law, and practiced at the bar. There 
he spent the days of his boyhood and manhood, and there, after he had 
almost completed his three-score years and ten, he rests from his labors. 
The sorrowing multitudes who attended his funeral testified, as no lan- 
guage can, to the character of the man. Their expressions of tenderness 
and affection, and their gentle ministrations fitly crowned the career 
which they had watched with pride and love. Truly, “The path of the 
just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect 
day.” 

I shall not believe that even now his light is extinguished. If the 
Father deigns to touch with divine power the cold and pulseless heart of 
the buried acorn, and make it to burst forth from its prison walls, will 
He leave neglected in the earth the soul of man, who was made in the 
image of his Creator? If He stoops to give to the rosebush, whose with- 
ered blossoms float upon the breeze, the sweet assurance of another 
spring time, will He withhold the words of hope from the sons of men 
when the frosts of winter come? If Matter, mute and inanimate, though 
changed by the forces of Nature into a multitude of forms, can never 
die, will the imperial spirit of man suffer annihilation after it has paid a 
brief visit, like a royal guest, to this tenement of clay? 

Rather let us believe that He who, in his apparent prodigality, wastes 
not the raindrop, the blade of grass, or the evening’s sighing zephyr, 
but makes them all to carry out His eternal plans, has given immortality 
to the mortal, and gathered to Himself the generous spirit of our friend. 

Instead of mourning, let us look up and address him in the words of 
the poet; 


Thy day has come, not gone; 

Thy sun has risen, not set; 

Thy life is now beyond 
The reach of death or change, 

Not ended — but begun. 

O, noble soul! O, gentle heart! Hail, and farewell. 


514 


FUNERAL SERMONS AND ADDRESSES 


CONGRESSIONAL EULOGIES. 

BY CONGRESSMAN GRAFF, OF ILLINOIS. 

I believe that after all the greatest interest in his life was the inter- 
est he took in the affairs of the community in which he lived. He moved 
in but one direction. He did not seek opportunity to get into the Record 
that he might see his name frequently appear. He made no play for 
public favor, he scrambled not for public notice, but moved always in 
the same direction, and that was in the direction of what he conceived 
to be his duty. 

So, then, from that standpoint and analysis of his life, I say that we 
are justified in spending this brief hour in tribute to the memory of a man 
who stood as a fair type of the general level of American citizenship. 
He was a silent man. The silent forces of nature are the most powerful. 
Sound is not force. One of the greatest forces of nature is that silent 
one which draws the waters from the oceans, the rivers, the ponds, and 
the creeks of the world, and takes them to the heights from which the 
generous clouds distribute them to the waste places of the earth; and 
so this silent man could not do otherwise than by his life exert a power- 
ful and uplifting influence for good in the community where he lived and 
patiently worked and died. 

This man, who lived the satisfying life of content, is an example of 
the golden mean which is commended by Horace in the following lines: 

He that holds fast the golden mean, 

And lives contentedly between 
The little and the great, 

Feels not the wants that pinch the poor, 

Nor plagues that haunt the rich man’s door. 

Embittering all his state. 

The tallest pines feel most the power 
Of wintry blasts; the loftiest tower 
Comes heaviest to the ground; 

The bolts that spare the mountain’s side 
His cloud-capt eminence divide. 

And spread the ruin round. 

But the pagan poet, Horace, does not fulfill my purpose of illustra- 
tion or give full expression to this man’s life; and his translator, the 
Christian poet, Cowper, carries the thought to higher heights, which the 
life of our colleague typified. 

And is this all? Can Reason do no more 
Than bid me shun the deep and dread the shore? 

Sweet moralist! afloat on life’s rough sea, 

The Christian has an art unknown to thee; 

He holds no parley with unmanly fears; 

Where duty bids he confidently steers, 

Faces a thousand dangers at her call, 

And, trusting in his God, surmounts them all. 


DEATH OF PERSONS OF NOTE AND PROMINENCE 


515 


And, as I believe, this man, not the slave of ambition, contented in 
his career, fearlessly followed the commands of duty and his God. 

BY CONGRESSMAN BALL, OF TEXAS. 

It has been said that we are prepared for the death of the old; we 
can be in a measure prepared for the death of the very young, who are 
thereby spared the sorrows and vicissitudes of after life, but it is hard 
for us to reconcile ourselves to the death of those who are taken away 
in the flower of their usefulness. The life of such a one is sometimes 
pictured as a broken shaft; but, Mr. Speaker, when we have but a few 
years at best, and when, as individuals, we are only mere atoms in the 
sphere of human activity, is it for us to say when the proper time has 
come to die? Is it not a truth to be gleaned from all the addresses on this 
occasion that our brother left practically all that mortal man can hope 
to leave to posterity and to his family — a life well rounded in its useful- 
ness, beautiful in its simplicity and devotion to duty; a life that has left 
no stain upon his memory and that is a benediction and a consolation to 
his friends and his family? 

Death has come suddenly, but it did not meet him unprepared, for 
all his life had been a preparation, so living here as to deserve a higher 
and better life. A score of years is as nothing in the sum of eternity. 
The great question is, when called to die, Are you ready to meet that 
Creator “from out whose hand the centuries fall like grains of sand?” 

Our brother was ready; as others have borne witness, he was a 
devoted Christian. We heard his pastor, who knew him best in life, and 
who can speak better than I of his Christian experience and conduct, 
deliver an eloquent address over the bier of our departed friend in the 
church of which he was an honored member in life. 

BY CONGRESSMAN LLOYD, OF MISSOURI. 

His chief virtue was in his moral influence and Christian manhood. 
His life each day was an exhibition of the truthfulness of his profession. 
No one doubted him. He was a forceful exemplar of right living. His 
words and acts brought no reflection on Christianity. Think as we may 
about religion, discard the Bible if it is thought best and class it with 
profane history, belittle the work of the church and discourage individual 
devotion to the tenets of Christianity, but when the coffin shall hold the 
body, the funeral dirge shall be sung, and mother earth receive back its 
own, the greatest consolation that can come to the survivors is the hope 
of the resurrection and eternal union of loved ones where separation 
never take place and tears are never known. 

What a beautiful monument he has left! A structure of his own 
hand. The heritage of a pure and upright life. The marble shaft erected 
over the grave by family and friends may crumble to earth and be for- 
gotten, but the influence of his good deeds will continue like the waves 
of the mighty ocean, rolling on until they break upon the farther shore. 
His influence will tend to strengthen and encourage long after the body 
has turned to dust and the marks of recognition shall be effaced. 


516 


FUNERAL SERMONS AND ADDRESSES 


Our friend lias gone, and his untimely taking reminds me of these 
words: 

Death takes us unawares 
And stays our hurrying feet, 

The great design unfinished lies, 

Our lives are incomplete. 

BY CONGRESSMAN GILBERT, OF KENTUCKY. 

There are two consoling thoughts which are of special significance 
in the material universe around and about us. One is the evident fact 
that there is but one Architect in creation — planets, stars, and constel- 
lations have but one Builder. The other fact is that no substance can 
be destroyed and lost. Changes in form and combination of elements 
may occur, but everything is sacredly preserved. May we not, there- 
fore, by analogy, conclude that spiritual things, which are higher than 
those which are material, are also preserved? I believe that nothing in 
the universe of God is lost. Our intellectual achievements, our mental 
attainments, our smiles and tears, our happiness and sorrows, our affec- 
tions and hatreds are all preserved, and will be used in ascertaining our 
proper places when the balance sheet is made out for our starting 
point on the other shore. I believe that every ray of light, every 
emotion, and every good thing is preserved and used. In the sweet by 
and by we will see again the crucifixion, the landing of the Pilgrims, and 
whatever else has occurred in the material universe. 

I believe that no flower was ever born to blush unseen, and that no 
flower ever wasted its sweetness upon the desert air. On the contrary, 
its beauty and its sweetness are preserved to ornament and perfume 
that house of many mansions. They are preserved along with smiles of 
affection and deeds of kindness which have not been seen or appreciated 
in this world. 


BY CONGRESSMAN LAMB, OF VIRGINIA. 

These occasions remind us that “it is not all of life to live, nor all 
of death to die.” 

What we call death, with all its painful apprehensions and anxious 
forebodings, is but a change of form and duration of existence. Religion, 
nature, conscience — all teach that there is a life beyond. When the frail 
casket that holds our better and nobler being is laid in the silent grave, 
the emancipated spirit will return to the Being who gave it, and we shall 
find homes prepared that the “eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither 
entered into the heart of man.” 

Though cut off in the prime of life, in the midst of an honorable and 
useful career, our colleague did not live in vain. His influence will 
survive in his country, his state, and on the pages of his country’s 
history. 

We do not agree with the couplet — 

The evil that men do lives after them; 

The good is oft interred with their bones — 


DEATH OF PERSONS OF NOTE AND PROMINENCE 


517 


But prefer to believe that the evil that men do is a signal light to warn 
their fellows of the breakers ahead, while the good is a friendly sign- 
board to point the road to higher endeavor and nobler purpose. 

May these occasions, hallowed in their tendencies and time-honored 
as a custom, bring pure and noble thoughts to our minds as we pay 
tributes of respect to our departed friends. In emulating the virtues and 
shunning the weaknesses — if he had them — of our lamented friend, let 
us so live as to bring credit to ourselves and advance the interests and 
promote the happiness and well-being of those who have clothed us with 
the grave responsibilities of official position. 

With tender memories of our departed colleague we pray that peace 
and happiness may follow those who immediately and directly bind that 
memory to earth. 

BY HON. WILLIAM W. KITCHIN, M. C., NORTH CAROLINA. 

After all, to die a Christian’s death should be the great purpose of 
every man. Honors and riches and all else desired by mortal man shall 
perish away with generations and be forgotten amid the centuries, but 
the soul that has put its trust in the Conqueror of death, the Redeemer 
of the world, shall live forever. Wherever human intellect has existed 
there has been an earnest desire, a silent prayer, for immortality — for an 
eternity of existence. 

The kindness and mercy of an all-wise Creator has answered that 
universal prayer, and so today, in accordance with the blessed doctrines 
of the New Testament and his faith in them, we believe that the spirit of 
this man is destined to eternal happiness. As we have by his death 
been reminded that Father Time is ever ready with his scythe to strike 
us down, let us take the solemn lesson ever impressed upon us and 
renew our devotion to the best principles of every great and worthy 
existence, right and justice to all and by all, strict performance of duty 
amid all temptations, and never-failing kindness and charity to all of 
God’s creatures. Then may we, Mr. Speaker, when the dread summons 
calls us from loved ones into unknown darkness, go not alone — terrible 
thought, alone — but be, as we believe our friend was, accompanied 
by the Prince of Peace, whose mercy, love and sacrifice are sufficient for 
us and shall ever bless us. 

BY CONGRESSMAN RANSDELL, OF LOUISIANA. 

My heart bled and still bleeds for that home, but I believe the 
Heavenly Father, who doeth all things best, has wife and children in 
His keeping, and I also believe that the father and husband, though hid- 
den to mortal eyes, still watches over his loved ones and aids them in 
their earthly journey. 

Good-by, my friend! While here I loved thee well, and hope to meet 
thee some day in the valley beyond the river, where we can rest under 
the shade of pleasant trees and live again our happy days. Thy memory 
and the influence of thy pure, sweet life shall never pass from me, but 
I shall garner them in my holy of holies among the most precious treas- 
ures of my life. 


518 


FUNERAL SERMONS AND ADDRESSES 


The monarch may forget the crown 
That on his head so late hath been; 

The bridegroom may forget the bride 
Was made his own but yester e’en; 

The mother may forget the babe 

That smiles so sweetly on her knee; 

But forget thee will I ne’er, Glencairn, 

And all that thou hast done for me. 

BY CONGRESSMAN ROBINSON, OF NEBRASKA. 

Mr. Speaker: So far as we have any knowledge, man is the only one 
of all created beings to whom is given the information that all earthly 
life must end in death. The experience and observation of mankind 
early in life impresses upon his mind the fact that death is the common 
lot of all the race. Through the grim gateway whose gloomy portals 
open upon a mystery which the yearning eyes of humanity have never 
penetrated or solved, all created beings which from the beginning have 
trod the earth in life have passed, and through that same gateway all 
created beings now living or hereafter to be born must surely go. This 
much we know to be the plan of the great Creator of the universe. The 
gift of earthly life brings with it the certainty of earthly death. 

The promised length of days to man is three score years and ten, 
but certain as is death, it seems to enter but little into the plans and 
calculations of our life. There is within us a feeling which causes us to 
look with terror and aversion upon death. We shrink from contempla- 
tion of the awful mystery. So common and universal to mankind is this 
feeling that many join in the belief that it is part of nature’s plan to 
guard the race in times of trial, misfortune, misery, and despair from 
seeking entrance through the gates of death before, in the fullness of 
nature’s plan, they are called to go. In vain has humanity, during all 
the centuries, rapped at the dark and silent portals through which the 
countless millions have passed. The yearning desire of all mankind to 
know what lies beyond the tomb is only satisfied by faith as it is mani- 
fest in some of the established forms of religion upon earth. 

As in the course of life youth, strength, and vigor must pass from 
us with the lapse of years to give way to the feebleness and helplessness 
of age, it would seem to be a part of nature’s plan to prepare the human 
mind to enter into the dread “valley of the shadow of death” with resig- 
nation. But death does not always wait until the tree of life is withered, 
nor does it always give warning of its approach by robbing the vigorous 
limbs of their strength, by whitening the locks, by dimming the bright- 
ness of the eye, or causing the elastic step to become feeble and waver- 
ing. It comes at times without warning to robust youth and vigorous man- 
hood; and so the message came to him whose untimely death we this 
day commemorate. When to the human eye he seemed in the full vigor 
of health, when, judging by his years, he was in the very prime of man- 
hood, death placed its finger upon his heart and it was still. 


DEATH OF PERSONS OF NOTE AND PROMINENCE 


519 


BY HON. E. J. BURKETT, OF NEBRASKA. 

To my mind the highest tribute that can be paid to any man is that 
he was loved by his fellows. 

If there was one sentiment more often than all others voiced there 
upon the occasion of the funeral in his home city, it was the humani- 
tarian principle and practice of our colleague. All said that he was 
generous even to his own detriment; that he was charitable beyond 
measure; that in his heart there abounded fraternity, and that he loved 
his fellow-men and was willing to sacrifice his personal comfort and wel- 
fare that others might be more happy. And as we stood there by his 
open grave, surrounded by those friends from far and near, from all 
walks and callings and avocations in life, the raw wind driving the sleet 
and snow into our very marrow, I could not help but think of that story 
of George Howe, in that beautiful little compilation of tales of Auld 
Drumtochty — Bonnie Brier Bush. 

That story impresses the fact, as you remember, that to be great in 
death one must have merited it in life — that men are loved for what 
they do for others, rather than what they do for themselves. You remem- 
ber George Howe sacrificed his comfort and personal tastes for poor, 
miserable, drunken, gutter-bedragged Andra Chaumbers. He curbed his 
vanity and gave ethers credit for his own efforts, and “made them bet- 
ter than himself,” as one of the characters says. But in turn all loved 
him, and at his death they gathered together from all classes to lay 
him away. The rich boy from the city was there, and the fisherman’s 
son from the seashore. 

Royal blood coursed through the veins of the one, and tracing his 
ancestry to the “beautiful queen,” he gloried in the noble pedigree. The 
other could see naught behind him but a stern manipulator of a fishing 
smack. With them, too, you remember, was poor downfallen Chaumbers. 
Truly it was a cosmopolitan gathering. They blended their tears and 
shared their sorrows — the rich and the poor, the high and the low, nobil- 
ity and peasant. For each and all he had done something. 

Our beloved congressman is gone. He lives now only by his example. 
His deeds are history. From them may we cull the good and emulate 
them, and thus build for ourselves lasting tablets in the memories of our 
fellow-men. 


BY U. S. SENATOR ALLEN, OF NEBRASKA. 

The dead jurist and statesman was a firm believer in the Christian 
religion, and he was a master of Biblical lore and Biblical history. He 
had an abiding faith in the immortality of the soul, and he loved to repeat 
the words of Longfellow: 

Life is real! life is earnest! 

And the grave is not its goal; 

Dust thou art, to dust returnest, 

Was not spoken of the soul. 

Although called from time to eternity before he had lived the allotted 
three score and ten years, it is not within the province cf his most 


620 


FUNERAL SERMONS AND ADDRESSES 


devoted friend to say that his life work was not well finished at that 
time. As long as his last friend lives, the grave of this eminent citizen 
of my beloved state will be moistened by the tears of affection, and as 
often as the season returns his tomb will be bedecked with rare flowers, 
nature’s first and most beautiful offering to spring. 

Mr. President, our friend was an ambitious man withal, but his 
ambitions were in the right direction. He was not sordid. He was not 
ambitious for personal gain or personal preferment. He was am- 
bitious that his influence might be of benefit to those around him 
and of benefit to the world; and he learned also this lesson from the 
beautiful poem of Longfellow, from which I have quoted, a few stanzas 
more of which he often quoted to me: 

Lives of great men all remind us 
We can make our lives sublime, 

And departing, leave behind us 
Footprints on the sands of time. 

Footprints that perhaps another, 

Sailing o’er life’s solemn main, 

A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, 

Seeing, may take heart again. 

Let us, then, be up and doing, 

With a heart for any fate; 

Still achieving, still pursuing, 

Learn to labor and to wait. 

Mr. President, life is but a breath; at best a span. A few days of 
sunshine and shadow, a few days of pleasure and pain, a few days of 
tears and joy and sorrow, and man lies down and fades into the future 
to awake on the shores of eternity. 

I believe it is w r ell with my friend, to whose memory we have dedi- 
cated the service of this hour. 

BY SENATOR THURSTON, OF NEBRASKA. 

Mr. President, I am not prepared to say that there is anything to 
regret in his early decease. His family miss him; they have suffered a 
great loss. His friends miss him; they have suffered a great loss. His 
district is deprived of his services, and the loss to the state is also great; 
but from the standpoint of the man I see nothing to regret in the fact 
that he was called, and called suddenly, in the very prime of life, in the 
hour of his greatest vigor and strength, to fathom the mysteries of the 
infinite. 

Mr. President, I look upon the man who thus passes beyond the 
veil as a fortunate individual. I see nothing to desire in length of years — 
in the years that come when the strength fails, when the vigor departs, 
when a man becomes more or less of an onlooker by the roadside, past 
whom the great active procession runs and leaps. For myself, I would 


DEATH OF PERSONS OF NOTE AND PROMINENCE 


521 


prefer to die as he died, before the first touch of age, before the first 
disappointment that must come when one realizes the failure of power — 
to go out at the summit and amid the successes of victorious life, to 
die in the harness, when all men looking on regret the loss. 

So today I do not mourn for the dead. I sympathize with those whom 
he has left behind, but for him I do not and can not mourn. He has 
gone beyond, we of the Christian faith believe to a future of added use- 
fulness, where the power and strength he has laid down here will be 
taken on again under better conditions, to be used in greater fields of 
usefulness than is possible in this temporary existence of ours. 

We peer into the impenetrable shadow, but we do not see; we listen 
in the infinite silence and there is no sound; but the cable of human 
hope stretches from shore to shore. Over it we whisper our messages of 
love to those who have gone before, and with the ear of faith wait the 
answer of our prayers. 


V. THE OTHER LIFE— RESURRECTION, 
IMMORTALITY, HEAVEN. 

“IF A MAN DIE SHALL HE LIVE AGAIN?”— JOB 14:14. 

REV. W. J. McLAUGHAN, D. D. 

There are some questions that are prayers. Such an one is this 
parenthetical question of Job. There are certain places in the Alps where 
the Swiss peasants blow a horn to create echoes that gratify the tourist. 
The peasant has lived so long in the mountains that for him they have 
lost all their significance. As he stands there he thinks not so much 
of the heights of the Jungfrau or the Matterhorn, of the whiteness of 
their pinnacles or the grandeur of their precipices as he does of the 
small fee that the tourist may give him for his little performance. In 
other words, by living among the mountains they have become to him 
commonplace. He is more interested in a few cents than in all their 
splendor. This is all too true about our own life and many of the things 
that are grandest therein. The immortality of the soul is one of the 
greatest thoughts man knows. 

We can form little conception of what it meant to the world to have 
no revelation of immortality, to have no conception of anything that was 
bright and beautiful beyond the present, to grope like blind brutes, bound 
in everywhere, limited by a land of shadows where all that made life 
worth living was lost. We need sometimes to come back to these ele- 
mental truths, these grand thoughts of the race, these mighty mountains 
of the human imagination that have become to us by living among them 
forgotten commonplaces, and realize their sublimity and their grandeur. 

We find the desire for immortality everywhere. We are told that the 
desire being universal is no proof of immortality. There have been men 
and women who did not wish to be immortal; and everybody now does 
not wish to be immortal. The fact that there have been exceptions only 
proves the universality of the rule. It is by exceptions that rules are 
proven. Because a few people are blind that is no evidence that every- 
body should be blind. Because certain people cannot see a great truth, 
that is no evidence that everybody else ought not to be able to see It. 
There is more talk today perhaps than ever before about certain people 
not wishing to be immortal. I don’t blame them. Why should they? 
They have lived only for themselves. They would only make immortal 
brutes. Why should a brute want to be immortal? While they have no 
wish to be immortal, I believe it is not a matter of wishing. The univer- 
sality of the desire finds expression in ever form and in every land. 

Let us now look at the question from another standpoint. ‘Tf a man 
die shall he live again?” What is the peculiar characteristic of Christ’s 
ministry? He came to bring life and immortality to light. It was there 
before. All history proves that men dreamt of it; that men had an 
instinctive belief in it. All experience goes to show that men think of 
it; that life would be different without that thought, though it existed 


RESURRECTION, IMMORTALITY, HEAVEN 


523 


in a chaotic and indefinite shape. Jesus Christ came and He brought 
this thought to light in a clear, concise, complete and definite form. He 
did not come to answer man’s desire with arguments. You cannot prove 
immortality any more than you can prove God. There is no system of 
arguments that cannot be answered that will try to prove God, and there 
is no system of arguments that cannot be destroyed that will try to 
prove immortality. Jesus Christ did not try to prove it. He made no 
argument on immortality. There is no argument in the Bible on either 
of these two unprovable questions. The Bible assumes them both. It 
assumes God and it assumes immortality. The Bible assumes that immor- 
tality exists irrespective of what it has got to tell; and the great reason 
perhaps why the Bible did not tell the old patriarchs and the Israelites 
more about this subject was because of the absurd descriptions of the 
future life that were contained in the heathen religions. All the heathen 
religions abounded with definite details as to what man would be like 
in the other world, as to what man would be doing in the other world. 
There is the same tendency abroad today. Jesus Christ neither argued 
about immortality nor went into details as to what it would be like. “In 
my Father’s house are many mansions. If it were not so I would have 
told you. I go to prepare a place for you.” 

“If a man die shall he live again?” Yes, says Jesus. What sort of 
body? Jesus does not tell you. What shall he do? Jesus does not tell you. 
What shall he be like? Jesus does not tell you. Jesus does not tell you 
any of these things, but He simply says, “that where I am there ye may 
be also.” The consciousness that God was there would have satisfied 
Job, would have satisfied any patriarch, for what made death so terrible 
to them was the breaking of the communion between God and a pious 
soul. The mere statement of the fact by Jesus that He would be there, 
would have been supreme satisfaction to Jacob or David or Isaiah, or 
any of the other great heroes of the olden time. 

But Jesus told us more than that. He told us not only that God 
would be there, but He told us that love would be there in its highest 
and best sense. Love in God and love in one another in a way that 
love cannot be seen now, limited by the restrictions that are associated 
with the human body. Jesus tells us of these great things and enables 
us to build our hopes, not upon details that are trivial, that might be 
misrepresented and misunderstood, but upon great, broad, universal, 
abstract, eternal truths that cannot be questioned and cannot be denied. 

“If a man die shall he live again?” All the modern movements of 
life go to prove the reality of immortality, go to answer this question 
which Job asked at a venture, which Job asked as a vague hope, and 
transform it into a blessed truth, a reality that cannot be denied. The 
evidences for this truth instead of being overturned are confirmed by 
all modern philosophy and science, the evidences of this truth bring 
home to our hearts in our hours of temptation the greatest satisfaction, 
and in our hours of sorrow the most sublime comfort. 

There is another thought that was present to Job that is present in 
the world today. If God made a man for something he isn’t finished 
when he dies. What man is? What was the use of working at a man 


524 


FUNERAL SERMONS AND ADDRESSES 


for eighty years if that is all God can make out of him? The highest 
possibilities of manhood go to prove that there must be something better 
yet for which man is being shaped and trained. 

Again, belief in justice demands immortality. The world is not just. 
The righteous man is punished. Was not Job being punished just then, 
though perfectly righteous? Yet Job did not give up his faith. This 
question is one of Job’s efforts to pierce through the difficulty. “If God 
be good afid if communion with God be the highest type of life, why am 
I left childless, why am I left helpless, why am I left poor, while on 
every hand there are men who deny God, and defy Him, who rejoice in 
their families, add to their wealth and have everything they can desire.” 
In human hearts the desire for immortality is associated with the desire 
for justice. God planted in us this desire for justice. We feel that if men 
do wrong and seem to succeed and there be a God they ought to be 
punished. We know they are not punished here, and our very hearts grip 
on justice, and say there must be another world, there must be an im- 
mortality where these things will be equalized. Though sin carry with 
itself punishment it does not carry with itself an outward manifestation 
of punishment equivalent to the sin committed, and justice in human 
hearts cries out for immortality 

“If a man die shall he live again?” Justice cries, he must; ideal 
perfection cries, he must; Jesus Christ says, he must; the Old Testament 
teaches that he must, and so, though there is no proof that can be syllo- 
gistically stated, no argument that is incontrovertible, all experience, all 
intuition, all imagination combine in answering this question of Job 
with an emphatic affirmative. “If a man die shall he live again?” Yes, 
man says from his heart of hearts; yes, humanity says in all its languages 
and in all its lands; yes, the Bible says in all its revelations of mystery 
and simplicity. God says he shall live again either with himself in glory 
everlasting, or where we know not, in a punishment that is in keeping 
with his deserving, where the injustices of earth shall be rectified, and 
where the sins of the world shall be punished. 


THE GLORY OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 

REV. WILLIAM PATTERSON, D. D. 

In the Old Testament those who died in the Lord are spoken of as 
“gathered to their fathers,” or “into the garner,” as “sheaves of wheat 
fully ripe,” with the hope of “dwelling in the house of the Lord for- 
ever.” 

In the New Testament death is frequently spoken of as “a sleep.” 
By our Saviour it is referred to as going to the “house of many apart- 
ments” or “mansions,” and by Paul as entering into the “house not made 
with hands eternal in the Heavens.” 

Then John draws aside the curtain and reveals the glorified to us 
in their new home. They are spoken of as “a great company who are 
innumerable,” as “arrayed in white,” as “joining in the song of redeem- 
ing love,” as being “led by the quiet waters through the green pastures,” 


RESURRECTION, IMMORTALITY, HEAVEN 


525 


as “free from all sorrow and rejoicing in the presence of the Lord.” The 
place of their abode is described as containing everything that man 
craves for or desires, and as free from everything that man fears or dis- 
likes. The streets are spoken of as “golden,” and the gates and walls 
of the city as of “pearl and precious stones” — the things for which men 
struggle and strive on earth; and then the “night of darkness,” the “sea 
of separation,” the emblem of sorrow and unrest, the pain that racks, 
the sorrow that crush the heart, the tears that dim the eyes — all these 
things are absent from the home of those who fall asleep in Jesus. 

The same Scriptures assure us that we can have a “title clear” to 
this home above, for while John wrote his Gospel in order that men 
might believe that Jesus was the Christ and have life through trusting 
in His name, he wrote his first epistle that the believers might know 
that they were redeemed and that they had “an inheritance that was 
sure.” Paul was sure of it — so was John, and away back in the early 
days Job could say with confidence, “I know that my Redeemer liveth,” 
and he had the assurance that some day he would stand in His presence. 

All these Scriptures come to us for a purpose. We are warned of 
the brevity and of the uncertainty of life in order that “we may number 
our days and apply our hearts to wisdom” and do the right and serve 
God while while the day of opportunity lasts. We are told about the 
future state in order that believers may be freed from the fear of death 
and from the bondage that follows that fear, and in order that Chris- 
tians sorrow not for their departed “as those who have no hope.” These 
promises are intended to strengthen and encourage the Christians con- 
cerning their own future and also to comfort the hearts of the bereaved 
concerning their loved ones who died in the Lord. 

The glory of the Christian religion is in this — that it is a religion 
for childhood, for manhood, for old age, for sickness, and for death — a 
religion for time and for eternity, for the Lord Jesus who came to save 
men from their sins came also to redeem their lives and to free those 
who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage; 
to plant in their hearts a hope, to be like an anchor of the soul — sure 
and steadfast, a hope that would purify their lives and cheer their souls 
in death, so that they could say as Paul did say, “for me to live is 
Christ and to die is gain.” — Rev. William Patterson, D. D. 


IS THERE ANOTHER LIFE? 

REV. JOHN BALCOM SHAW, D. D. 

There is no if about death. It is the great certainty of time. All 
men, sooner or later, without exception and without discrimination, 
must die. Next to the question of our origin, and ranking, perhaps, before 
it in practical interest, is that other momentous question of destiny: 
What does death mean — annihilation or promotion, the rising or the set- 
ting of the sun, the end or the beginning of life, the entrance upon an 
unbroken sleep or the gateway through which we pass into an endless 
existence? Let us attempt to frame an answer to this question. 


526 


FUNERAL SERMONS AND ADDRESSES 


A distinguished scholar, writing a little over a year ago in one of 
our leading monthlies, declared it impossible to give any definite or posi- 
tive answer to the question. Man hopes to live again, and he should keep 
on hoping, said he, for there could be nothing more unfortunate than 
the shattering of this aspiration; but to justify the longing, much more 
to assure one’s self of its fulfilment, is a logical impossibility . This, in 
other words, was his statement: Man is only dreaming; and whether his 
dreams are to come true or not, they are so delightful that it would be 
a pity to awake him. Let him slumber on till death either throws him 
into an eternal sleep or awakens him to judgment. 

Is this the position we are forced to take? Are we merely surmis- 
ing, dreaming, guessing, when we believe in another life? and is this the 
nearest we can get to the truth of things? Are there no proofs of im- 
mortality? 

Three inquiries must be answered regarding the belief before it 
will pass muster with logic; and if these can be answered affirmatively, 
the belief will be found to rest upon a foundation which makes it secure 
and defensible, and to throw the whole burden of proof upon those who 
deny rather than upon those who affirm it. 

1. Is it possible? is the first of these questions, and we can make 
short work with it. It is a fact which surely no one will deny, that the 
act of creation called for greater power than would the act of resuscita- 
tion. He who put life into the human body can certainly preserve it 
after it has left the body. What is there more mysterious than birth? 
If that supernatural event can take place so constantly about us as to 
cease to awaken wonder, though it be the most wonderful thing in 
human life, shall we deny the possibility of a rebirth after death, which 
involves not an act of creation, but merely an act of simple preservation? 

A physician once told me of a unique experience of his. He was 
performing a simple operation that required the administration of an 
anaesthetic, but did not seem to him to demand the presence of a second 
doctor. The operation was well advanced when he discovered symptoms 
of collapse. He immediately examined the pulse, and found that the 
heart had stopped. He put his ear upon the patient’s chest, and could 
detect no possible signs of breathing. The man to all appearances was 
dead; but, believing there was at least a possibility of recalling life, he 
instantly brought into service every known means and method of 
resuscitation, and after the lapse of a half hour had the immense satis- 
faction cf seeing the patient’s lips begin slightly to twitch, and the 
heart give evidence of the faintest flutter; an hour more, and life was 
fully restored. Now, if life could leave the body for a few minutes, and 
return, is it inconcievable that the two might be separated for centuries, 
and then be reunited? And if a human physician, by the use of material 
aids and agencies, could resuscitate life, is it difficult to believe that the 
Creat Physician, who has all power in heaven and on earth, can bring 
life back into the human body at the resurrection? There can be no 
question, even in the minds of the most skeptical, as to the possibility 
of immortality. 


RESURRECTION, IMMORTALITY, HEAVEN 


527 


II. But is a belief in immortality reasonable? Reason is all on its 
side. The nature of creation makes it reasonable. There must be — 
there is — a purpose in everything. What purpose would there be in 
man's creation, if he were made only for this brief span? The only way 
in which to reconcile the inequalities and injustices of human life, the 
reversed conditions, the abnormal relations, that now exist, is to look 
for another or further life, in which all this shall be readjusted or 
reversed. “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men 
most miserable.” 

The nature of the soul also justifies the belief. Although the soul 
is now united to the body, it has a life of its own, and in an important 
sense is independent of it. It belongs to a wholly different sphere. Is it 
therefore at all unreasonable to believe that, when that part of our 
being which is material and belongs exclusively to this material world, 
dies, the other part, which we call the soul and belongs to a totally dif- 
ferent sphere — the sphere of the unseen and immaterial — should seek 
its native air and still continue to exist? No more unreasonable, no less 
likely, than that a balloon charged with rarer air should instantly upon 
being released ascend to a higher altitude. 

The nature of life is equally in its favor. Life is the most mysterious 
and subtle thing in the universe, and its escape from the body at death 
is quite in keeping with its character. Wherever it is found it shows a 
tendency to continuity, from the seed that carefully hides the life-germ 
away and carries it over to the succeeding season, to the traits and 
tendencies which heredity transmits from one generation to another. 
Indestructibility is no less strikingly a characteristic of life, whether 
seen in the successful resistance of plant life to the blight of winter or 
the posthumous influence that emanates from every human life and 
cannot be obliterated. Science tells us that while force can be diffused, 
it cannot be destroyed, neither is matter destructible at the hands of 
man; and we believe both of these statements. Does it not call for far 
less credulity to believe that so subtle, so mysterious, so divine a thing 
as life is imperishable? Surely, when all these varied considerations 
are taken into account, the theory of another life seems eminently 
reasonable. 

III. Is immortality probable? That which is reasonable is always 
more or less probable; but add to the arguments from nature, from the 
character of the soul, and from the genius of life, which we have just 
cited to establish its reasonableness, the argument from instinct, and the 
probability is as strong as it could be and not become absolute certainty. 
Immortality is one of the two great instincts of the human heart. All 
men feel, in different degrees but from a universal intuition, that there 
is a God and that there is a hereafter. These are not the product of 
education or tradition, for they may be found where education and tradi- 
tion have never come; but they are the innate aspiration of universal 
humanity. 


628 


FUNERAL SERMONS AND ADDRESSES 


“A solemn murmur of the soul 
Tells of the world to be, 

As travelers hear the billows roll 
Before they reach the sea.” 

And the existence of this aspiration as fully justifies our belief in that 
other world as the sensations of hunger and thirst warrant a search for 
food and water, and make man certain that he will find them. 

IV. Now, when a belief is possible, reasonable and probable, does 
it not come close up to the border of certainty? So reasoned Socrates 
and Plato; so reasoned many of the strongest minds of the race. Need 
there be — ought there to be — any question of certainty with us, then, 
when a belief so securely founded as this is found to have the unquali- 
fied sanction of Jesus Christ? When standing upon this strong founda- 
tion, we behold One next to us who saw farther into the heart of things 
than anyone else the world has seen; whose character is so superior to 
the character of other men, and whose words were so much wiser than 
the words of the wisest, that we must believe He came from another 
sphere, and upon dying went back to it again; who was pre-eminently 
self-poised and truthful, never having been discovered, even by His 
severest critics, to have once told a lie, — when we find this Divine Man 
standing next to us and hear Him say, with a straightforwardness and 
simplicity that are sublime: “In my Father’s house are many mansions: 
if it were not so, I would have told you;” “I am the Resurrection and 
the Life; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he 
live, and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.” 

How, then, should we look upon death? Not with foreboding and 
terror, but, if we are trusting Him who “brought life and immortality to 
light,” with calm assurance and expectation. It shall then be a messen- 
ger of peace from the King; a chariot let down to take us to glory; a 
bridge thrown across the black chasm over which we shall pass in 
safety and triumph into the blessed life. — Rev. John Balcom Shaw, D. D. 


GONE, BUT NOT FORGOTTEN. 

RABBI J. LEONARD LEVY, D. D. 

^Thou wilt not leave my soul in the grave; neither wilt Thou sufTer 
Thy precious one to see destruction. — Psalm 16:10. 

It was customary among the ancient Romans that when one of their 
dear ones was dying, his relatives would gather around his bedside and 
carefully watch the sufferer as he breathed his last. The nearest rela- 
tive would catch upon his own lips the departing breath of the dying 
loved one and would cry aloud the name of the departing person, 
repeating, each time, the word, “Vale,” farewell. This word is the sob 
with which every human life ends. Be it pleasant or be it sad, the song 
of existence terminates in a minor key; its melodies conclude with a 
wail of lament. Over the aeolian harp of life play the winds of death and 
the sigh cf “farewell” is the last note wrung from its trembling chords. 
Whether we be the most favored or forsaken, the most courageous or 


RESURRECTION, IMMORTALITY, HEAVEN 


529 


Cowardly; whether we be lettered or ignorant, rich or poor, strong or 
weak, the end is the same. “Farewell” must all say to loved ones and 
friends, to privileges and burdens, to joys and sorrows. 

Yet, is it not strange, as Alger remarks, that the terms used, in 
most languages, in bidding farewell, suggest not so much separation, as 
the implied hope of meeting again, or confidence in God’s guidance and 
providence, or a fond and loving wish for future well-being. The Jew 
of old would bid farewell in a phrase which denotes “Live in peace,” or 
“May your going out and coming in be in peace.” The Greek would 
say, “Chairete,” which signifies, “May you rejoice.” The Roman said 
“Vale,” “Mayest thou be strong.” People who speak the Romance lan- 
guages, Italian and French, for example, use the term, “Addio,” or 
“Adieu,” which means, “I commend you to God.” The German “Lebe- 
wohl” signifies, “May you live blessedly.” The English “Farewell” sug- 
gests, “May you journey pleasantly,” while the word “good-bye” is a 
contraction of the phrase, “God be with you.” But of all the expressions 
used when friends and loved ones part, none is stronger in its suggestion 
of hope and faith than the French “Au revoir,” or the German, “Auf 
wiedersehen,” (till we meet again). 

The languages of mankind are, practically the pictures and emblems 
by means of which men make intelligible their hopes and ideals, as well 
as their wishes and thoughts. It is not without powerful suggestion that 
we fail to find in all the Old Testament literature, any term or phrase used 
in the sense in which we use “Good-by,” in modern times. The Hebrew 
language seems, by this coincidence, to indicate that the sense in which 
we now employ the words “Farewell” or “Good-by,” was unknown to our 
ancestors. Parting and leave-taking were associated with the blessed 
hope of final reunion, and if the etymology of the “parting” phrases, 
used by the nations, whose languages we have quoted, means anything, 
it suggests that the bidding of farewell has been almost everywhere inter- 
twined with the hope of meeting again. 

Wherever men take their earthly leave of dear ones, there also 
is found the belief that “farewell” means “Till we meet again.” 

The reason of man has generally refused to believe that this world 
is a blind alley. Mankind does not regard the grave as a cul-de-sac. 
It does not believe that mind and matter are the same, that body and 
soul are equal. All that is sweet and pure in human nature has been 
bound up in the hope that after life is over here, there is a higher 
life elsewhere and while it is possible that the general aspiration of 
humanity is based on a wrong interpretation of the facts of the universe, 
it is, nevertheless true, that the generality of mankind holds the belief 
dear that “God will not leave man’s soul in the grave, that He will not 
permit His precious ones to see destruction.” Dead they may be, but 
they live on elsewhere; gone, they may be, but they are not forgotten. 

How this hope arose none can tell with certainty, but many believe 
that it took its origin in a mother’s heart. The first human mother 
stricken by the affliction of death, bending low over the body of her 
beloved child, bathing it with her scalding tears, suffusing it with her 
warm kisses, found her heart growing warmer as she felt her child 


630 


FUNERAL SERMONS AND ADDRESSES 


growing colder. And the warmth of her heart produced the hope that 
though her child might go, it would not he forgotten, though it might 
he put away upon the bosom of mother earth, from the place it held 
within her bosom, it could not be removed. Sleeping, she saw her child’s 
form rise before her in the visions of the night. In her dreams, she 
saw her little one come back to her, and her eye met its eye with the 
old look of love, her lips met its lips with the former kiss of affection, her 
hand grasped its hand in the old, sweet way, and their interlaced bodies 
swayed in the passionate embrace of love. In the morning, the vision 
faded, but none could convince that mother that her child was gone 
forever beyond the power of reunion. She then dreamed a waking 
dream that, at some time, she would be joined with the object of her 
affection, when partings and farewells would be unknown, when together 
they would live never to be sundered. 

This is generally accepted as the origin of the Immortality-hope. 
Today, it is regarded as one of the most reasonable of human hopes. 

Over the future, near and remote, God has mercifully drawn the 
veil of uncertainty, and for this act of mercy, we should be eternally 
grateful. Were we to know what life contains for us, all action would 
be paralyzed. Were we to know whither the river of existence is to 
flow, it would be congealed at its very source. To know the future with 
absolute certainty would rob life of all its dramatic intensity and all its 
enchanting interest. All the surprises that make our existence so pleas- 
ant, all the hopes that lead us onward and upward, all the energy we 
exercise to reach even the noblest ends, would be blasted and killed at 
their very inception, if we knew what the coming days had in store for 
us. No enterprise would be undertaken, no new movement would be 
started. No man would toil and strive for the children born to him, 
if, beforehand, he knew the sad fate that awaited many of them. Few 
would care to enter upon the marriage relation if they were certain of 
the trials that were to fall to their lot in the future. It is -well that 
tomorrow’s events and the future’s contents are hidden from our view. 
It is as though God had so shaped our life that today’s duty should be 
done, honestly and confidently, leaving the working out of our destiny 
to the operation of God’s unchanging law. It is as though God had so 
determined human existence that all our days on earth should be given- 
over to the full performance of life’s obligations, abiding in hope for a 
future beyond the grave. The immortality of the soul remains a belief, 
a hope and for ages to come, probably forever, it must so remain. But 
it is a belief supported by reason and of the highest ethical value. 

Yet there are some who cannot accept this hope, simple and uplift- 
ing as it is. There are some people who cannot understand or cannot 
bring themselves to believe, ttiat once dead, we can live again. Even 
for these people, the discovery of the “indestructibility of force” still 
has its powerful meaning, even though they deny that after death there 
is life. Every act we perform is the product of a conscious force and the 
consequences of the exertion of that force live on, through the influence 
of our character. We live through our character, through our influence, 
though our body dies. We live here on earth as truly as many believe 


RESURRECTION, IMMORTALITY, HEAVEN 


531 


we live on elsewhere. There is no termination to force and there is no 
end to that force in us which we call self, or character. Every act we 
perform goes on re-producing itself like a chain letter in which there is 
no break. Every deed we do goes on to all eternity working out its 
destiny. Every act of goodness, every seed of love we sow yields its 
harvest, and every act of ill, every act contrary to the moral law re-ap- 
pears, sooner or later, with dire results. “The gods are just and, of our 
pleasant vices, make whips wherewith to scourge us.” We sow wind and 
reap a whirlwind. The law of God, in its majesty, can never be infringed. 
Our deeds reproduce themselves and constitute us a source of bless- 
ing or curse to the remotest ages. In this form of immortality, we must 
believe. We may deny it, but God laughs at our denial and Nature mocks 
at us. In the continuity of God’s law there is no break. Do good, and 
though we do not live to see it, good must come of it. Do evil and evil 
must be the consequence. We may doubt the immortality beyond the 
grave; to the immortality of human influence, none can raise a single 
logical objection. Sometimes as we recall the names writ large on 
history’s pages, we think that those who failed in their day are the 
failures of the world. But how undeceived we are today! Nero, Alexan- 
der, Napoleon, were considered among the greatest successes of the 
world, in the days of their triumphs. But who, today, mentions the name 
of Nero without disgust? Who can regard the great military leaders in 
any light but that of legalized murderers? Dante was an exile, Savonarola 
perished at the stake in Florence, Bruno was a martyr for the cause of 
human reason, Lincoln was shot in the very heyday of his life. These 
men are deemed by many to have failed because, when the sun of happi- 
ness was still high on the horizon of their lives, it suddenly set. Yet their 
influence for good shall outlast the memory of such names as Nero and 
Napoleon, and when Alexander shall be execrated these men shall receive 
the grateful blessings of an uplifted humanity. 

“So live that when thy summons comes to join 
The innumerable caravan, that moves 
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take 
His chamber in the silent halls of death. 

Thou go not, like the quarry slave at night. 

Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed 
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave, 

Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch 
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.” 

So live that when you are dead you shall be missed. So live that 

loved ones may find in you an inspiration to goodness. So live that 

the house of God shall be a testimony to your character. So live that 
religion shall find through you a witness to its great beneficence. So 
live that if your children do evil, they shall not be able to say: “This 

my father taught me; this my mother showed me.” So live that you 

shall enjoy to its fullness the happiness of the immortality hope. So live 
that when gone you shall not be forgotten. 


532 


FUNERAL SERMONS AND ADDRESSES 


“IF A MAN DIE SHALL HE LIVE AGAIN?” — JOB 14:14. 

BISHOP MATTHEW SIMPSON. 

I. As to the immortality of the soul, revelation alone can give a 
satisfactory answer. We may reason from the mind’s faculties, we may 
talk of its powers, and we may know the analogies that abound in nature, 
still the doubt comes back again — a doubt so strong that it never dis- 
pelled the fears of antiquity. Indeed, while the philosophers reasoned 
upon this subject, and reasoned ably, one of them, as able as any of his 
compeers, said that the philosophers had rather promise immortality 
than prove it to be true; and Julius Caesar, as many may remember, 
declared, in a speech delivered in the Roman Senate, that death was the 
end of hope, as well as the end of fear. He felt somewhat as did the 
Greek poet in an elegy on his friend, when he sang: 

“Alas! the tender herbs and flowery tribes, 

When crushed by Winter’s unrelenting hand, 

Revive and rise when vernal showers come; 

But all the mighty, virtuous, and wise 
Bloom, fade, perish, fall; and then 
Long, dark, oblivious sleep succeeds. 

Which no propitious power dispels, 

Nor changing seasons, nor revolving years.” 

But how wonderful for us to turn from the mere conjectures of 
philosophy, from the denials of orators and poets, and the dim fancies 
that hang over the mind, to the clear declarations of Holy Writ! There 
we find that man is immortal, and that the breath which the Eternal 
Jehovah breathed into man shall last as long as eternity. 

II. But the second question: “Shall the body be raised?” Here, 
too, we must appeal to the declarations of Holy Writ, for if it occur, 
it is beyond the power of nature, and must be by supernatural power; 
and hence God alone can give the answer. 

Not only by explicit declaration is this doctrine taught, but it was 
made clear to our comprehension in the resurrection of Christ from the 
dead. “He died for our offences, and was raised again for our justifica- 
tion;” and it is said He “became the firstfruits of them that slept.” The 
“firstfruits” was a technical expression among the Jews, very forcible 
to them, but not so directly forcible to us. We must place ourselves in 
their circumstances to appreciate its true meaning. The offering of 
the firstfruits was not only held by them in special reverence under the 
injunction of the law, but so connected itself with the harvest as to 
command their especial attention. A similar festival is now observed 
among some of our western Indian tribes, and also among other nations. 
The law of firstfruits was this: When the ripening grain was seen in the 
fields some of it was cut, and before man was allowed to eat thereof, 
the first ripened heads were taken up to Jerusalem and laid before the 
altar of God as a thank-offering, as well as a pledge of the coming 


RESURRECTION, IMMORTALITY, HEAVEN 


533 


harvest. Now Christ represents Himself as the firstfruits of them that 
slept. Here is the great human family, and God designs that a great 
harvest shall be gathered home. 

But sometimes a difficulty occurs to us, and we ask: “Can we 
believe what is mysterious?” We may believe the fact, while we are not 
required to believe anything with regard to the manner of the production 
of the fact. Let us illustrate. Take the growing grass in the spring- 
time. That the earth sends forth the grass is plain. How are the par- 
ticles of earth, the sunlight, the dew, the moisture, changed into the 
green leaf? By what process does one blade give forth wheat and 
another corn? How is it that apparently the same particles are shaped 
into the beautiful color of the rose and the darker shade of the dahlia? 
The mode is mysterious, but the fact is plain. We know that the earth 
is covered with verdure, that the flowers bloom in the garden ,and that 
the trees are all beautiful with foliage; but by what process this is 
brought about we cannot tell. We may reason; we may proceed step 
by step, but the nature of the process is beyond the investigation of 
man. So that we believe a fact while the mode of its development is 
mysterious. 

Look again at those Northern lights that now blush on the horizon 
and then ascend in variegated columns toward the zenith. Who doubts 
that the heavens are illumined? who doubts that he sees the phosphor- 
escent currents flitting over the face of the sky? and yet we may ask 
how they are produced? 

Well did Newton say, when an old man, bending under the weight 
of years, that he was like a little child on the ocean’s beach, gathering 
a few pebbles from the vast heaps that lay strewn around. But we have 
a firm basis when we listen to the declaration of God. Still, the mind 
sometimes turns away and asks: “How can it be that there will be a 
resurrection? is it not impossible? Do not the particles of the human 
body enter into the composition of plants and of substances that may 
feed on human flesh? Can it be possible, when the body is burned, the 
bones ground to powder, and the ashes strewed upon the wind or sunk 
in the ocean’s depth, that these particles will be reunited? Can they be 
gathered together, and shall that body in its particles coexist? I ask on 
what does the objection rest? If we analyze the feeling, is it not this: 
that God, the great Architect, cannot follow in His knowledge the parti- 
cles whithersoever they go, or that He has not ability to reconstruct that 
frame again? I go into the shop of the silversmith and leave my watch 
to be repaired; the wheels are worn, the pivots no longer perform their 
office. If I take the watch to pieces I cannot remember the wheels well 
enough to replace them: he withdraws the pins, unfastens the various 
parts, strews them all around, lays them away, and in the laps of days 
or weeks takes them up, puts them piece to its piece, part to its part, and 
reconstitutes the framework again. And why? Because he has a knowl- 
edge of the fitness of every particle. Shall the great Architect be unable 
to remember the particles of our body, and watch their way wherever 
they may be in this wide universe? or is it in the power of man to so 
scatter the particles of matter that God cannot reunite them? 


534 


FUNERAL SERMONS AND ADDRESSES 


Again, the question whether He will, must be solved by Himself. Is 
it clear that He can. The silversmith knows not the particles of the 
watch; the shepherd knoweth not the names of his flock; the husband- 
man knoweth not the parts of his farm, as God knoweth and hath marked 
every particle of matter in this wide universe. 

The Christian’s faith stands on the word of God. But while we rest 
it there, there are analogies in nature to help our minds, and, if possible, 
to impress more clearly this doctrine upon us. There is the sleep of 
winter. The tree, which was once full of foliage, parts with its leaves at 
the approach of the autumnal frosts; there seems to come a death, and 
yet it is but partial. The tree, though bare, though covered with the ice 
of winter, though there is no swelling bud to be seen, yet, when the 
spring-time returns, the bud will enlarge, the leaves will reappear, the 
flowers will crown the branches, and it will bring forth fruit after its 
kind. Here is revivification — an awakening again. We have this same 
principle illustrated at night in the sleep of our body; the image of 
death, and the waking up to life again. Who knows but by this arrange- 
ment of nature God designs to teach us the possibility of a resurrection? 
These are but partial illustrations; there are others in nature. Look at 
the strange transformations in animal life. There is the caterpillar, an 
object almost of disgust, which, if noticed at all, is noticed with a feeling 
of aversion — watch its labors as it spins itself a web, a winding-sheet. 
It appears the image of death, and yet if we watch that chrysalis, by and 
by the ball will burst, and there will come out of it, not the caterpillar 
that took up its abode in the tree, that spun the thread and went to sleep, 
but instead of it a beautiful butterfly. If such things take place, who 
knows what we shall be? We may be laid in the shroud, we may be 
buried in the grave, we may sleep the long, long sleep — even angels may 
look down and see no sign of life; but the tomb shall open, the shroud 
shall disappear, and there shall come up from the grave, not the worm 
of the dust in its precise form when laid there, but a being brighter than 
angelic creation, and that shall dwell near to the throne of God. Here 
are indications even from nature to tell us there may be a resurrection. 
Yet these, though analogies, are not proofs; for even these creatures 
shall die and be no more. They are not proofs, but they are illustrations 
of what Almighty power can do. 

But, it may be said, if these bodies shall rise, will there not be the 
same infirmities? I answer, the figure to which I have already alluded 
may teach us that there will be changes, though the same body. What 
these shall be I cannot tell. And yet, nature throws some light upon this 
point. The chemist or the mineralogist will show you that the same 
matter crystallizes something in different shapes, and he will explain to 
you what he knows of the different forms of the same substance. Let 
us take some varieties of it known to every one of us. Limestone and 
marble are essentially the same substance, yet far differently constituted 
We have further illustrations of this principle. The air we breathe, the 
chemist tells us, is composed of oxygen and nitrogen. The scnool-boy 
knows this, taught as he is in the chemical language of the day, and 
yet these elements, oxygen and nitrogen, when compounded in different 


RESURRECTION, IMMORTALITY, HEAVEN 


535 


proportions, produce the dangerous aquafortis of our shops. There is no 
difference in the air which we breathe and nitric acid, except in the 
proportion in which those elements are mingled together. The charcoal 
which we trample under foot as worthless is precisely the same sub- 
stance, in an impure state, as the costly diamond, both having carbon as 
a basis. The one is worthless, and the other brings a princely price. 
They are differently fashioned by Divine skill. And may not these worth- 
less bodies of ours, that are like the dust of the earth now, when differ- 
ently fashioned by Divine power, shine as diamonds in the day when God 
shall come to make up His jewels? Here we see the Divine power may 
differently fashion matter; and the apostle, in speaking of this, says: 
“Who shall change our vile body that it may be fashioned like unto his 
glorious body?” 

But then, again, what says reason with regard to a resurrection from 
the dead? I answer, reason must say that there ought to be a resurrec- 
tion of the dead. Look at the conditions of humanity. Shall I live? shall 
the soul be immortal? have I sinned in that frame with which the soul 
was united? would it not be proper that I should suffer the penalty of 
my sin in the same nature? Did I, because of my love for truth, allow 
this frame to be mangled rather than utter a falsehood? Did I suffer 
this tongue to be torn from my mouth; did I die as a martyr, or burn 
at the stake, rather than deny the Lord that bought me? How fitting 
that in the day of eternity I should wear a martyr’s crown! that the same 
brow that had been pierced should be radiant with glory; that the same 
tongue that had been taken from my lips should be eloquent again with 
praise; that the same hand which was thrust into the flames rather than 
betray its master should receive immortal life! Is there not a beauty, 
a fitness, in the idea of the resurrection from the dead? There is a 
reasonableness, I say, in the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, for 
without it Christ’s triumph would be only partial, and the curse of the 
law would not be annulled. But when it shall be annulled, I shall rise, 
and then soul and body will be reunited in the New Jerusalem, with 
powers improved, with a nature glorified. It is then I shall enjoy the 
fulness of redeeming love. Even now, planting myself on the declara- 
tions of Scripture, I feel that I can put my heel on the neck of the 
monster, and can say: “O death! thou too shalt die; O grave! I will be 
thy plagues; O death! I will be thy destruction.” — Bishop Matthew 
Simpson. 


WHAT FAITH MAKES OF DEATH. 

ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D. D. 

“An entrance ministered abundantly. Shortly I must put off this 
my tabernacle. My decease.” — 2 Peter 1:11, 14, 15. 

We are all mourners here this morning. A life of practical godli- 
ness, of bright Christian service, and, latterly, of wonderfully brave 
endurance, has come at last to the end to which we slowly learned to 
know it must come. The loving wife, who was a helper and a counsellor 
as well, the staunch loyal friend, the diligent worker, with her open 


536 


FUNERAL SERMONS AND ADDRESSES 


hand, her frank cordiality, her clear insight, her resolute will, has passed 
from our sight, but never from our love nor our memory. The empty 
place in the home can only be filled by Him who has made it empty, and 
we all pray that He may be near. Every member of this congregation 
must feel that a strong stay has gone. A wider circle, for whom I may 
presume to speak, mourns the loss of a dear friend; a far wider one, 
covering the whole country, offers through my lips this morning affec- 
tionate and earnest sympathy to the stricken hearts here today. 

The Bible very seldom speaks of death by its own ugly name. It 
rather chooses to use expressions which veil its pain and its terror; and 
so does common speech. But the reason in the two cases is exactly 
opposite. The Bible will not call death “death” because it is not a bit 
afraid of it; the world will not call death “death” because it is so much 
afraid of it. 

The Christian view has robbed it of all its pain and its terror. It 
has limited its power to the mere outside of the man, and the convic- 
tion that death can no more touch me than a sword can hack a sunbeam, 
reduces it to insignificance. These thoughts are brought out in these 
fragmentary words which I ask you to consider now. I think you will 
see that they lend us some very valuable and gladdening thoughts as to 

the aspect in which Christian faith should regard the act of death. 

I have ventured to alter their order for the sake of bringing together 
the two which are most closely connected. 

I. I ask you, then, to look with me first, at that representation of 
death as putting off the tabernacle. 

“Knowing that shortly I must put off this my tabernacle, even as 
our Lord Christ hath showed.” 

The expressions seem to blend the two figures, that of a tabernacle — 
or tent — and that of a vesture. As the Apostle Paul, in like manner, 
blends the same two ideas when he talks of being “clothed upon with 
our house which is from heaven,” and unclothed from “our earthly house 
of this tabernacle.” 

To such small dimensions has Christian faith dwindled down the ugly 
thing, death. It has come to be nothing more than a change of vesture, 
a change of dwelling. 

Now what lies in that metaphor? Three things that I touch upon for 
a moment. First of all, the rigid limitation of the region within which 
death has any power at all. It affects a man’s vesture, his dwelling-place, 
something that belongs to him, something that wraps him, but nothing 
that is himself. This enemy may seem to come in and capture the whole 
fortress, but it is only the outworks that are thrown down; the citadel 
stands. The organ is one thing, the player on it is another; and what- 
ever befalls that has nothing to do with what touches him. Instead of 
an all-mastering conqueror, then, as sense tells us that death is, and as a 
great deal of modern science is telling us that death is, it is only a 
power that touches the fringe and circumference, the wrappage and 
investiture of my being, and has nothing to do with that being itself. The 
“foolish senses” may declare that death is lord because they “see no 


RESURRECTION, IMMORTALITY, HEAVEN 


537 


motion in the dead.” But in spite of sense and anatomist’s scalpels, 
organization is not life. Mind and conscience, will and love, are some- 
thing more than functions of the brain; and no scalpel can ever cut 
into self. I live, and may live — and blessed be God! I can say — shall 
live, apart altogether from this bodily organization. 

Another thing implied in this figure, and, indeed, in all three meta- 
phors of our text — is that life runs on unbroken and the same through 
and after death. 

The same in direction, the same in essence, uninterrupted through 
the midst of the darkness, the life goes on. A man is the same whatever 
dress he wears. Though we know that much will be changed, and that 
new powers may come, and old wants and weaknesses fall away with 
new environment, still the essential self will be unchanged, and the life 
will run cn without a break, and with scarcely a deflection. There is no 
magic in the act of death which changes the set of a character, or the 
tendencies and desires of a nature. As you die so you live, and you live 
in your death and after your death the same man and woman that you 
were when the blow fell. 

The last idea that is here in this first of our metaphors is that of a 
step in advance. “I must put off this my tabernacle.” Yes! in order 
that instead of the nomad tent — the ragged canvas — I may put on the 
building, the permanent house; in order that, instead of the “vesture of 
decay,” I may put on the fine linen, clean and white, which is the 
righteousness of saints, and the body which is a fit organ for the per- 
fected spirit. 

True! that does not come at once, but still the stripping off of the 
one is the preparation for the investiture with the other; and there is 
advance in the change. Death is as truly a step forward in a life’s 
history as birth is. 

II. And now we may turn to the remaining two metaphors here, 
which have a more close connection with each other, and yet are capable 
of being dealt with separately. Death is further spoken of as a departure. 

This aspect of death shows it to us as seen from this side. Like the 
former, it minimizes its importance by making it merely a change of 
place — another stage in a journey. 

A change of place, yes! an Exodus from bondage, as true a deliv- 
erance from captivity as that old Exodus was. Life has its chains and 
limitations, which are largely due to the bodily life hemming in and 
shackling the spirit. It is a prison house, though it be full of God’s good- 
ness. We cannot but feel that, even in health and much more in sick- 
ness, the bondage of flesh and sense, of habits rooted in the body, and 
of wants which it feels, weighs heavily upon us. By one swift stroke of 
Death’s hammer the fetters are struck off. Death is a Liberator, in the 
profoundest sense; the Moses that leads the bondmen into a desert it 
may be, but to liberty and towards their own land, to their rest. It is 
the angel who comes in the night to God’s prisoned servant, striking 
the fetters from his limbs, and leading him through the iron gate into 
the city. And so we do not need to shiver and fear for ourselves or to 


538 


FUNERAL SERMONS AND ADDRESSES 


mourn for our dear ones, if they have passed out of the bondage of 
“corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God.” Death 
is a departure which is an emancipation. 

Again, it is a departure which is conformed to Christ’s “decease,” 
and is guided and companioned by Him. 

Ah! There you touch the deepest source of all comfort and all 
strength. 

“We can go through no darker rooms 
Than He has gone before.” 

And the memory of His presence is comfort and light. What would 
it be, for instance, to a man stumbling in the polar regions, amidst eternal 
ice and trackless wastes, to come across the footprints of a man? What 
would it be if he found out that they were the footprints of his own 
brother? And you and I have a Brother’s steps to tread in when we take 
that last weary journey from which flesh and sense shrink and fail. 

III. The last aspect of these metaphors is that one contained in the 
words of our first text, “An entrance ministered abundantly.” The going 
out is a going in; the journey has two ends, only the two ends are so 
very near each other that the same act is described by the two terms. 
Looked at from this side it is a going out; looked at from the other side 
it is a coming in. 

So, w r hen we see a life of -which Christian faith has been the under- 
lying motive, and in which many graces of the Christian character have 
been plainly manifested, passing from amongst us, let not our love look 
only at the empty place on earth, but let our faith rise to the thought 
of the filled place in Heaven. Let us not look down to the grave, but up to 
the skies. Let us not dwell on the departure, but on the abundant 
entrance. Let us not only remember, but also hope. And as love and 
faith, memory and hope, follow our friend as she passes “within the veil,” 
let us thank God that we are sure — 

“She, when the bridegroom with his feastful friends 
Passes to bliss, at the mid hour of night 
Has gained her entrance.” 

— Alexander Maclaren, D. D. 


THE WAY HOME. 

REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D. D. 

"An highway shall be there.” — Isa. 35:8. 

Sometimes the traveler in these ancient highways would think 
himself perfectly secure, not knowing there was a lion by the way, bury- 
ing his head deep between his paws, and then, when the right moment 
came, under the fearful spring the man’s life was gone, and there was a 
mauled carcass by the roadside. But, says my text, “No lion shall be 
there.” The road spoken of is also a pleasant road. God gives a bond 
of indemnity against all evil to every man that treads it. 


RESURRECTION, IMMORTALITY, HEAVEN 


539 


I do not care how fine a road you may put me on, I want to know 
where it comes out. My God declares it: “The redeemed of the Lord 
came to Zion.” You know what Zion was. That was the King’s palace. 
It was a mountain fastness. It was impregnable, and so heaven is the 
fastness of the universe. No howitzer has long enough range to shell 
those towers. Let all the batteries of earth and hell blaze away; they 
cannot break in those gates. Gibraltar was taken, Sebastopol was taken, 
Babylon fell; but these walls of heaven shall never surrender either 
to human or Satanic besiegement. The Lord God Almighty is the 
defense of it. Great capital of the Universe! Terminus of the King’s 
highway! 

An old Scotchman, who had been a soldier in one of the European 
wars, was sick and dying in one of our American hospitals. His one 
desire was to see Scotland and his old home, and once again walk the 
heather of the Highlands, and hear the bagpipes of the Scotch regiments. 
The night that the old Scotch soldier died, a young man, somewhat reck- 
less, but kind-hearted, got a company of musicians to come and play under 
the old soldier’s window, and among the instruments there was a bag- 
pipe. The instant that the musicians began, the dying old man in delirium 
said: What’s that, what’s that? W T hy, it’s the regiments coming home. 
That’s the tune, yes that’s the tune. Thank God, I have got home once 
more!” “Bonny Scotland and Bonny Doon,” were the last words he 
uttered as he passed up to the highlands of the better country. 

Hundreds and thousands are homesick for heaven: some because 
you have so many bereavements, some because you have so many temp- 
tations, some because you have so many ailments, homesick, very home- 
sick, for the fatherland of heaven. At our best estate we are only pil- 
grims and strangers here. “Heaven is our home.” Death will never 
knock at the door of that mansion, and in all that country there is not 
a single grave. How glad parents are in holiday times to gather their 
children home again! But I have noticed that there is almost always a 
son or a daughter absent — absent from home, perhaps absent from the 
country, perhaps absent from the world. Oh, how glad our Heavenly 
Father will be when He gets all His children home with Him in heaven'. 
And how delightful it will be for brothers and sisters to meet after long 
separation! Once they parted at the door of the tomb; now they meet 
at the door of immortality. Once they saw only through a glass darkly; 
now it is face to face; corruption, incorruption; mortality, immortality. 
Where are now all their sins and sorrows and troubles? Overwhelmed 
in the Red Sea of Death, while they passed through dry-shod. 

Gates of pearl, cap-stones of amethyst, thrones of dominion, do not 
stir my soul so much as the thought of home. Once there, let earthly 
sorrows howl like storms and roll like seas. Home! Let thrones rot and 
0jjjpjj»0g wither. Home! Let the world die in earthQuake-struggle, and 
be buried amid procession of planets and dirge of spheres. Home! Let 
everlasting ages roll irresistible sweep. Home! No sorrow, no crying, 
no tears, no death. But home, sweet home; home, beautiful home, ever- 
lasting home; home with each other, home with God. 


640 


FUNERAL SERMONS AND ADDRESSES 


One night lying on my lounge, when very tired, my children all 
around me in full romp, and hilarity, and laughter — on the lounge, half 
awake and half asleep, I dreamed this dream: I was in a far country. It 
was not Persia, although more than Oriental luxuriance crowned the 
cities. It was not the tropics, although more than tropical fruitfulness 
filled the gardens. It was not Italy, although more than Italian softness 
filled the air. And I wandered around looking for thorns and nettles, 
but I found that none of them grew there, and I saw the sun rise, and I 
watched to see it set, but it sank not. And I saw the people in holiday 
attire, and I said: “When will they put off this and put on workmen’s 
garb, and again delve in the mine or swelter at the forge?” but they 
never put off the holiday attire. 

And I wandered in the suburbs of the city to find the place where 
the dead sleep, and looked all along the line of the beautiful hills, the 
place where the dead might most blissfully sleep, and I saw towers and 
castles, but not a mausoleum or a monument or a white slab could I see. 
I went into the chapel of the great town, and I said: “Where do the poor 
worship, and where are the hard benches on which they sit?” And the 
answer was made me, “We have no poor in this country.” And then I 
wandered out to find the hovels of the destitute, and I found mansions 
of amber and ivory and gold; but not a tear could I see, not a sigh could 
I hear, and I was bewildered, and I sat down under the branches of a 
great tree, and I said, “Where am I? And whence comes all this scene?” 

And then out from among the leaves, and up the flowery paths, and 
across the bright streams there came a beautiful group, thronging all 
about me, and as I saw them come I thought I knew their step, and as 
they shouted I thought I knew their voices; but then they were so glori- 
ously arrayed in apparel such as I had never before witnessed that I 
bowed as stranger to stranger. But when again they clapped their 
hands and shouted “Welcome, welcome!” the mystery all vanished, and 
I found that time had gone and eternity had come, and we were all 
together again in our new home in heaven. And I looked around, and I 
said: “Are we all here?” and the voices of many generations responded 
“All here!” And while tears of gladness were raining down our cheeks, 
and the branches of the Lebanon cedars were clapping their hands, and 
the towers of the great city were chiming their welcome, we all together 
began to leap and shout and sing, “Home, home, home, home!” 

I heard of a father and son who, among others were shipwrecked at 
sea. The father and the son climbed into the rigging. The father held 
on, but the son after a while lost his hold in the rigging and was dashed 
down. The father supposed he had gone hopelessly under the wave. The 
next day the father was brought ashore from the rigging in an exhausted 
state, and laid in a bed in a fisherman’s hut, and after many hours had 
passed he came to consciousness, and saw lying beside him on the same 
bed his boy. Oh my friends! what a glorious thing it will be if we wake 
up at last to find our loved ones beside us! The one hundred and forty 
and four thousand, and the “great multitude that no man can number” 
— some of our best friends among them — we, after a while, to join the 
multitude! Blessed anticipation! The reunions of earth are anticipative. 


RESURRECTION, IMMORTALITY, HEAVEN 


641 


We are not always going to stay here. This is not our home. O the 
reunion of patriarchs, and apostles, and prophets, and all our glorified 
kindred, and that “great multitude that no man can number!” 

Does it not seem that heaven comes very near to us, as though our 
friends, whom we thought a great way off, are not in the distance, but 
close by? You have sometimes come down to a river at nightfall, and 
you have been surprised how easily you could hear voices across the 
river. You shouted over to the other side of the river, and they shouted 
back. It is said that when George Whitefield preached in Third Street, 
Philadelphia, one evening time, his voice was heard clear across to the 
New Jersey shore. When I was a little while chaplain in the army, I 
remember how at even-tide we could easily hear the voices of the pickets 
across the Potomac, just when they were using ordinary tones. And as 
we stand by the Jordan that divides us from our friends who are gone, 
it seems to me we stand on one bank and they stand on the other; and 
it is only a narrow streain, and our voices go and their voices come. 
— Rev. T. De Witt Talmage, D. D. 


THE EMPTY GRAVE. 

(Matt. 28:1-8.) 

REV. F. W. KRUMMACHER, D. D. 

Let us pass in review the different features of this highly suggestive 
picture. And first of all, let the mind’s eye be attentively directed to the 
women setting out at early dawn; secondly, to the incidents which befell 
them at the sepulchre; thirdly, their report to the assembled disciples; 
as also, fourthly, the issue of their communication. 

You remember that when the corpse was deposited in Elisha’s tomb, 
it revived. In a spiritual sense, may we experience something similar! 
with this difference, however, that the effect wrought in us may be as 
much greater as the tomb we are now about to visit is greater, more 
sublime, and holier than was that of the prophet of Abel-Meholah. 

I. Night still rested upon the holy city, and a gleam of dawn was 
visible in the distance, when by its aid a heart-affecting sight is pre- 
sented to us in its quiet, deserted streets. It is the approach of the 
veiled procession. We recognize it as consisting of the female disciples 
of the crucified Lord. They move along with heads bowed low and eyes 
red with weeping. They have passed the night sleepless, or disquieted 
with unpleasant dreams; and now, as the Sabbath is over, they are 
silently moving towards the garden of Joseph, with their fine linen, their 
wreaths, and their spices, in order to render the last offices of love to 
the dear remains of their departed Friend, which had been interrupted 
when He was laid in the tomb. 

The sorrow-stricken women move silently along. It is not until they 
have nearly reached the garden that a petty care unseals their lips, and 
we hear them say, “V/ho will remove the stone for us from the mouth 
of the sepulchre?” Thus all their wishes and desires resolved themseives 
into this trivial solicitude. Considering the unequivocal prophecies which 


542 


FUNERAL SERMONS AND ADDRESSES 


they had repeatedly heard from the mouth of their Master, this seems 
hardly conceivable. But the fearful and bloody end of His life must have 
fallen like a terrific, devastating hailstorm upon the harvest-field of their 
hopes and recollections. 

II When these mourners reached the garden, they were still occu- 
pied with the anxious desire to know “who should remove the massive 
stone from the entrance to the tomb.” What do they perceive there? 
Oh! what can it mean? Behold! the stone has already been moved 
aside, and the interior of the tomb lies exposed. But the spectacle 
plunges them in fresh perplexity. The weakness of their faith sug- 
gests that some violence had been practiced upon His dear remains. 
Trembling with fearful anticipation, they draw near the sepulchre! Lo! 
suddenly there gleams forth from it a beam of light like lightning, and 
by its marvellous brilliancy they discover two figures, young men clad in 
glittering garments, in whom they immediately recognize two beings from 
another world, two angels of God. Do not marvel that the resurrection 
should have been accompanied by such extraordinary appearances as 
these. Without such, as some one has truly observed, the resurrection 
of Christ would have been a spring without flowers, a sun without rays, 
a victory without a triumphal wreath. It was right that the majesty of 
the Almighty should be revealed in every possible way in connection with 
it, and holy angelic beings are truly some of the most lovely rays of His 
glory. Yet they were not present for the sake of pageant or parade, but, 
as on every other occasion, so likewise on this, for the sake of those who 
are heirs of salvation. They had been sent as heralds, to communicate 
a message. Scarcely had the women recovered from their first aston- 
ishment, when one of the angels opened his gracious lips, and speaking 
to the sorrowful party from within the tomb, said, “Fear not ye: for I 
know that ye seek Jesus, who was crucified. Why seek ye the living 
among the dead? He is not here. He is risen, as he said. Come, see 
the place where the Lord lay.” There you have one of the most blessed 
messages ever yet heard on earth. The plain simple form in whies it 
presents itself to us at once stamps it with the impress of truth! 

The women feel conscious of the profound significance of the angel’s 
exclamation; but again they are so overcome by the greatness of the 
joyful news thus intimated, that at first they can only rejoice with 
trembling. They stand there dumb with wonder. But the heavenly mes- 
senger rouses them from their torpor, commanding them forthwith to 
go and tell the disciples of the Lord, and especially Peter, that their 
Master had risen, and is alive again. Truly a more glorious errand than 
this was never committed to any mortal! That which makes our office, 
the office of ambassadors for Christ, the most delightful on earth, is, that 
the charge committed to the minister of Christ is analagous to that given 
to the women. How enviable would the preacher of the gospel be, if the 
message which he has to declare were everywhere and at once believ- 
ingly received! — Rev. F. W. Krummacher, D. D. 


RESURRECTION, IMMORTALITY, HEAVEN 


543 


SHALL WE KNOW EACH OTHER THERE? 

REV. JOHN BALCOM SHAW, D. D. 

But then shall I know even as also I am known. — I. Cor. 13:12. 

If we thought this was not to be the case, Heaven would lose much 
of its attractiveness for us. There are times in our lives, particularly 
after death has come into our homes and ruthlessly seized some loved 
one, when we almost feel that we would rather be annihilated than to 
live forever in a state of uncertainty as regards those to whom we have 
been united on earth. Better no future life, we say, than a life in which 
recognition is denied. It is the prospect of an unending reunion at 
death that has held us up through the otherwise overwhelming bereave- 
ments of life. 

It gives me unspeakable comfort to believe and to say tnat tnere' is 
no fact regarding the future life about which we can have greater confi- 
dence than concerning recognition in heaven. The idea of immortality, 
and the idea of recognition after death, are so closely allied, so insep- 
arably related, as to be logically inseparable. If we are to live on in 
another world, our personality — that which makes us what we are, that 
which is our very self, and distinguishes us from others — must continue; 
and if our personality continues, our individuality, and therefore our 
identity, must abide, else that which contributes most to our essential 
entity, that which gives us our self-consciousness, perishes. It is a psy- 
chological truism to say that, if my ego is to exist hereafter, I shall have 
a self-consciousness, and if I have a self-consciousness I shall know my- 
self from others and others from myself. 

But not only are these two truths of continuity and recognition cor- 
related, but the arguments which substantiate the one substantiate the 
other. It is an instinct that leads us to believe in a hereafter; equally is 
it an instinct which prompts our expectation of a reunion there. Go where 
you may, this hope, this longing, fires the human breast. Plato felt it; 
Virgil recorded it; the Hindu finds it in the ancient Code of Manu; the 
Egyptians buried their dead in the hope of it, and the Indian has ever 
looked forward to it as one of the assured realities of the Happy Hunt- 
ing Ground. Shall such an instinct — universal, primitive, dominant — 
count for nothing? If it is valueless here, it is equally valueless as an 
argument for immortality. 

Reason teaches immortality; Reason also teaches recognition. Where 
were the wisdom of creating these relations, enjoining and encouraging 
them, building the Christian Church upon them, and giving to them the 
sanctions of the Church, if they are simply incidental and temporary? 
Where were the Fatherhood of God — its reality, its sincerity — if ties so 
sacred and tender could be severed by death? God’s relation to His 
Son, and the Son’s relation to His Father, are constant and unfluctuating, 
and for that reason form an ideal and an inspiration; but of what service 
would they be to us, of what influence over us, if our Heavenly Father 
had denied the same constancy to human fatherhood? Where were the 
significance of the judgment, if a man loses his identity at death? We 
shall all stand before the throne as the same individuals that we were 


,644 


FUNERAL SERMONS AND ADDRESSES 


on earth, and receive our rewards, or punishments, not as someone else’ 
or for someone else, hut as and for the same persons or individuals that 
were on earth. Why should we keep our identity up to that point, and 
then, upon being directed to the right or left, suddenly lose it? Where 
were the imperishable law of memory, if recognition is impossible? It 
will be the exercise of the memory that will awaken the praises of 
Heaven: our delight in meeting Jesus and having communion with the 
Father will depend largely upon the service of the memory. An immortal 
soul, with no memory of the past, is a contradiction; and if we can 
remember one thing, why believe that we shall forget another? 

Instinct and Reason, then, are both with us here, and strongly sup- 
port this universal hope. There are many, however, who, after admit- 
ting and feeling the force of both arguments, are more or less influenced 
contrariwise by certain plausible and much emphasized objections. Three 
of these call for attention: 

(1) That if the relationship of earth continue in Heaven, we shall 
cling to our loved ones with a partiality and tenacity incompatible alike 
with its happiness and holiness. To this I reply that such partiality God 
did not account an unholy or unlikely thing when He created the world, 
for He set the race in families, and commanded man before the fall to 
cleave unto his wife as unto no other; that Jesus feared no ill effects 
from such partiality when He selected twelve disciples, and plainly made 
it appear that He had three favorites among these; and what is still 
more significant, the blessed Trinity find nothing either inconsistent or 
unwholesome in entertaining a feeling for each other far closer and 
dearer than that held for the redeemed. What is not wrong for God 
or to God, surely need not be for or to us. 

(2) A second objection frequently heard is, that since we shall not 
have corporeal senses with which or by means of which we knew each 
other on earth, recognition will not be possible. It is not by these alone, 
or even chiefly, that we know each other here, but through the inner 
nature, the mysterious spiritual converse and communication which one 
soul has with another. Even if this were not the case, every represen- 
tation or suggestion which the New Testament makes of the resurrection, 
leads us to believe that our glorified bodies are to correspond to these 
which we now have. The redeemed are represented as seeing, speaking, 
feeling, hearing, singing; just as men and women are on earth. 

(3) The strongest objection is, that we could not be happy if we 
missed loved ones, and knew they must be lost. Doubt and uncertainty 
are often worse than fact. They would certainly be so here. To know 
that some were saved, though others were lost, would be better than to 
be in doubt as to whether any were saved, as we would be if recognition 
were impossible. This theory, moreover, is against human and divine 
experience. Some of our friends are now out of the Kingdom, but it 
does not make us excruciatingly sad — it would be better for us if it did. 
God knows all, and yet He is not oppressed by it. What does not destroy 
our happiness now, with all the fearful consequences of sin lying just 
ahead of many of our kindred, and what seems never to destroy the 
Creator’s felicity, may not be expected to counteract the joys of the 


RESURRECTION, IMMORTALITY, HEAVEN 


545 


heavenly life. A sense of justice, as well as the spirit of love, will 
control us; and we shall be so lost in the realization of the righteousness 
of God — so committed to the Saviour’s will, so averse to evil — that the 
punishment of the wicked will be accepted as a matter of fact, and 
approve itself to our sense of right. 

The papers only the other day reported the case of a man who was 
drawn upon a jury that was to try his son. At first he hesitated to act, 
but finally yielded, and allowed the case to proceed. When the testimony 
had all been submitted, he retired with his fellow-jurors, and felt him- 
self compelled in the interests of justice to vote with them for his son’s 
conviction. This may be an unusual instance, but instances where a 
father’s love gives place to his justice in dealing with a wayward son may 
be met with at every turn. Shall we have less equipoise of nature here- 
after than we have here? 

Our final authority is the Bible; and when the question of immor- 
tality is settled — as it must be before this second question can be ap- 
proached, much less discussed — it has for us a double trustworthiness. 
What does the Bible say upon the subject? 

It everywhere presupposes recognition after death, and in various 
ways: 

(1) In applying names to the inhabitants of Heaven. This it does 
in case of the three persons of the Trinity, the angels, and many of the 
worthies who are represented as among the redeemed. Names are also 
promised to us — and a name implies individuality and identity. 

(2) In revealing recognition among the members of the Trinity. If 
they know each other, and are known by the inhabitants of Heaven, why 
should not the redeemed, who are to be like them, have the same means 
of recognition? 

(3) In recording, and thereby endorsing and justifying, the expec- 
tation of recognition. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are all represented as 
desiring to be gathered to their fathers; and their burial is described as 
if it marked the fulfilment of that desire. David, upon the death of his 
cherished son, is quoted as saying: “I shall go to him, but he shall not 
return to me;” and the declaration is allowed to stand unchallenged. 

But the Bible does more than presuppose recognition — it actually 
affirms it. It declares that Saul knew Samuel at a glance, when the latter 
came back as if to reprove him; that the three favored disciples were 
quick to identify Moses and Elijah — from traditional descriptions and 
intuition, probably; and Jesus Himself pictured Dives and Lazarus as 
both recognizing Abraham, and knowing each other. 

And yet this is not all. The Scriptures, in the words of none other 
than Jesus, promise heavenly recognition. His assurance to His disci- 
ples, that He would come again, and receive them unto Himself, held out 
to them the prospect of renewing their relations with Him in the other 
life. His promise to Mary was: “Thy brother shall rise again,” implying 
that he was to remain her kindred in the hereafter. His word to the 
thief, “Today shalt thou be with me in Paridise,” plainly presupposed 
the man’s ability to recognize Him there. 


546 


FUNERAL SERMONS AND ADDRESSES 


The Bible goes even farther than this — it illustrates or exemplifies 
recognition. It sets before us the person of the resurrected Christ, and 
bids us behold in Him the first fruits of them that sleep. He was changed 
after His return from the grave, but His identity was not destroyed. His 
name, His face, His voice, His hands, to the very wound-prints, were the 
same. As He arose, so we shall rise also; changed, and yet unchanged; 
glorified, but still recognizable; knowing even as we are known. 

All this should give us perfect certitude. Nothing could be more 
clearly or unalterably established than our belief in future recognition. 
We may confidently expect to know each other there. Heaven is to be a 
place of reunion, and death a going home to keep it. The visions which 
some of our beloved have had just before leaving us, of dear ones waiting 
yonder to welcome them, were not hallucinations. Ere their spirits had 
been released, recognition was possible. A friend of mine, upon dying, 
called his children about him that he might bid them farewell, when, 
suddenly, and as if they were aware of what was transpiring on earth, 
the members of the family who had preceded him into the spirit land — 
the mother, an older son, and two daughters who had died in infancy — 
seemed to gather around his bed, and were as real to him as the ones 
who stood before him in the flesh. He knew them; they knew him. 
Turning from one group to the other in his conversation, and acting as 
a sort of medium of communication between them, he passed away, with 
a halo of happiness about his face, amid the salutations of the Heavenly 
group and the farewells of the group that still remained upon the earth. 
Was he dreaming? I cannot believe that he was. It was a vision as real as 
it was glorious. May we all have a like experience when we come to die! 
— Rev. John Balcom Shaw, D. D. 


THE EXPERIENCES OF A REDEEMED SOUL AFTER 

DEATH. 

REV. G. W. SHINN, D. D. 

What are some of the probable experiences of a redeemed soul imme- 
diately after death? 

We all recognize the fact that what is in this casket before us is only 
the body of our deceased friend. Something we call the soul has gone 
from this body. We cannot understand the connection between the soul 
and the body, but we have the general idea that the body is the instru- 
ment by which the soul makes itself known. The soul no longer ani- 
mates this body. It has gone elsewhere. It is living elsewhere. It is 
not here any longer. It has gone into the spiritual realm where its 
activities continue under new surroundings. It has not ceased to exist, 
nor is it in a slumbrous condition. We are to think of it as the same soul 
which was once manifested through this body, but now living its life 
under other conditions. There must therefore have been some experi- 
ences which that soul had upon its departure hence. What are they t 


« 


RESURRECTION, IMMORTALITY, HEAVEN 547 

I. First of all it has become convinced of the supremacy of the 
spiritual over the material. There is a constant struggle in the life that 
now is to accept spiritual verities. Material things are so insistent that 
they often press from us here even the thought of things spiritual. We are 
tempted to live as if we were only of the earth earthly. If we yield to 
the suggestions of some of the philosophy of the time we become materi- 
alists and know nothing of spirit and of the spiritual life. Men some- 
times make their senses the only avenues of knowledge and deny what- 
ever is not reached by their agency. If we escape the full influence of 
materialism we are nevertheless affected by it in some of its connec- 
tions, so that it is sadly true that we must struggle hard if we would 
retain our belief in the spiritual life, and in the spiritual verities which 
are more real than things material. Now a redeemed soul that passes 
hence passes into the world of departed spirits, and for it there is no 
longer any doubt of the existence of the spiritual world. The things that 
were once obscure are now as plain as the day in the new light into 
which it has entered. But beyond this it is able to see the vastly greater 
importance of that which is spiritual. 

II. A second experience of a redeemed soul after its entrance upon 
the spiritual life is, no doubt, that of realizing that its struggling with 
sin is over. Here the struggle was incessant. No day came without it. 
There was always the need of being upon the defensive. Temptations 
without, temptations within — this was the history of the soul here. But 
in that place whither it has gone there is no longer any of that which 
made up so large a part of its daily experience in the present life. What 
bliss it must be to be free from allurements to evil! What bliss to realize 
that there never again can be any danger of falling away from God and 
goodness! What bliss to know that thenceforth there shall be steady 
growth in righteousness without any peradventure of stumbling! 

III. And this mention of growth in righteousness suggests a third 
part of the experiences of a redeemed soul in Paradise and that is the 
conviction that now it shall develop in those graces which make it unceas- 
ingly Christ like. We cannot think of a soul’s remaining stationary in 
its attainments. There is endless progression before it. It has come 
into the nearer presence of vast ranges of truth. It is in condition to take 
into itself those elements which insure its wider and deeper develop- 
ment. 

Boundless indeed are the resources amid which it is to live, and its 
receptivity is vastly increased beyond all the possibilities of the present. 
We are to think of it as a growing soul. Knowing more, feeling more, 
doing more. It will be incessantly active, because its life shall be amid 
surroundings free from pain and discouragement. All the conditions will 
invite activity and every movement must be joyous. We are to think 
of it as placed where the growing Christ-like shall be accelerated and 
where gracious results are possible which could not be realized at all 
here. Here there is but feeble growth. There the advance in knowledge 
and holiness shall be beyond our present thought. 


548 


FUNERAL SERMONS AND ADDRESSES 


IV. One more experience of a redeemed soul in Paradise will be that 
of the home feeling. The other world will not seem so strange to the 
soul as the present does, for it will find itself in entire sympathy with 
what it meets, and the blest inhabitants of that place will not be as those 
whom it knows not, or knows but imperfectly. The soul has gone home. 
It will find there a blest companionship with the good of all ages, and 
there cannot be the strangeness which the uncertainty, the temptations 
and the sorrows of the present occasion. It is here that it was a 
stranger. There it shall be indeed at home. The home feeling comes 
to it at once. 

If then a soul departing hence in the Lord realizes the supremacy 
of the spiritual life, realizes that it has passed beyond all struggling 
with sin, realizes that it is to grow steadily into the likeness to Christ, 
and realizes that it has finally reached its true home — why should we 
mourn those who have died in the faith? Rather let us rejoice that they 
have passed out of the realm of the material, out of the power of temp- 
tation and that they have gone into the glory and the gladness of that 
life which knows no darkness and which is to be spent in the nearer 
presence of the Lord. 

Note. — Some of the thoughts in this address were suggested by one 
of Liddon’s sermons: “The First Five Minutes After Death.” — Rev. G. 
W. Shinn, D. D. 


VI. CHRISTIAN COMFORT; CONFIDENCE; 

RESIGNATION. 

GOD KNOWS— GOD PITIES. 

“Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that 
fear him; for he knoweth our frame, he remembreth that we are dust.” — 
Psalms 103:13, 14. 


REV. I. H. WOOD. 

The silver cord is loosed; the golden bowl is broken; the pitcher is 
broken at the fountain and the wheel at the cistern; man has gone to his 
long home and the mourners have gone about the streets. It is not for us 
to measure the length of the cord, or to tell the capacity of the bowl, or 
to determine the drawing power of the wheel. He who holds the water 
in the hollow of His hand, and metes out heaven with a span, and weighs 
the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance, now has the soul in 
His own keeping. We may not replace the pieces and say: This was the 
man. God alone can put the fragments together and estimate their worth. 

It is not for the speaker to value this man’s place in this 
community, or to call up memories of his career since boyhood, or to 
say exactly what was his strength or his weakness. Let me rather 
stand as one would who felt that in the casket was his own father carved 
in the marble of death, and it were his own mother that wept, and this 
was his brother and these were his own afflicted sisters, and this congre- 
gation were friends who knew and loved. 

God knows our frame, He remembers our frailty, and therefore He 
pities us as a father his children. 

I. God knows. A skillful instrument maker best knows the qualities 
of the product of his brain and fingers. He understands its strong points 
and its weak ones, for he is the creator of it all. So there is One who' 1 
knows precisely where in our nature we are at fault, where the sweet, 
loving deeds arise, where tension is strongest, and where resistance can 
least be made. 

He knows the body best because He fashioned it. He is fully aware 
of all that is involved as a result of such creation. Friends cannot appre- 
ciate us; they tannot rightly measure the good that we possess; they 
judge from the outward appearance; they do not see behind the result 
the great motive; they fail to realize that what we do is but a small 
proportion of what we really are. Friends may say today they regard 
his talents aright, but do they fathom the deeps from which the deed 
springs? Do they appreciate the outpush of his ambition, the splendid 
hopes he entertained for the future? We see the bud cut off from the 
plant and stop with the thought that there is only a bud. Another with 
better vision has already seen the beauty and the radiance of the flower 


650 


FUNERAL SERMONS AND ADDRESSES 


that is to be. We see the bud of a life; we say that is all; but there is 
One above who sees the promise of fruitage, knowing what twenty or 
thirty years more of activity can accomplish. We see the bud; God 
sees the flower. 

Least of all may our opponents judge us. They exaggerate defects, 
obscure or even forget excellencies, are prejudiced, unable to give an im- 
partial verdict. Even a good reputation may be beaten by the scandalous 
flail of abuse. Nor may we know ourselves. We live for the moment; 
we are in a maze; we can not summon ourselves to see ourselves. We 
are a bundle of energies. “The soul is the enigma” to itself. What we 
are in the depths of our being we can not fathom. The only solution is 
God. 

II. God pities. He might know us through and through. He might 
remember every trait and word and act, and it would be little satisfac- 
tion for us. But after His thought and remembrance He pities — as the 
father pities his child, only infinitely more; as the mother her infant, but 
with surpassingly greater tenderness. So that He invites the widow to 
leave her fatherless ones in His care and He will be as kind as a husband 
to her. 

The pity of God! It shone forth in the face of His Son as He went 
forth on His mission. As Jesus wept at the grave of His friend, so God 
w r eeps. As when the Saviour said while they drove the iron into His quiv- 
ering nerves, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” so 
God pities His offspring even when in their blindness they oppose His 
will. God is affected by every tear that stains the cheek, at every moan. 
He aches in every heartache. He agonizes in each struggle. He loves in 
every noble emotion. He says, “When thou passeth through the waters, 
I will be with thee, and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee.” 
Bring your grief and your sorrow to Him, for He cares for you. Like as 
a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him, for 
He knoweth our frame, He remembereth that we are dust. 

This one died suddenly. Quick comes the call summoning the soul into 
the presence of the Creator. It says, “Perhaps thy turn will be the next,” 
Are we ready? You whose hair is whitening fast, have you made wise 
preparation for the great change? 

He would have had me say, “Forgive your enemies. Be charitable, 
be generous, be brotherly. Wherein I was strong and good and manly, 
emulate my strength. Where I w r as weak, be very strong. Honor God 
and revere His name. Turn your hope to Christ. Behold the Lamb of 
God.” 


WHO HATH ABOLISHED DEATH.— 2 TIM. 1 :10. 

HORACE BUSHNELL, D. D. 

I. How mightily is the aspect of death changed by the simple 
passion of our Lord! He shows us there the eternally sovereign power 
of goodness, and we see how weak death is, when it comes to lay its hand 
upon goodness. We say, speaking historically, that Christ died. And 


CHRISTIAN COMFORT; CONFIDENCE; RESIGNATION 


551 


yet there seems, after all, to have been no death in the case. The terror 
and shrinking and grasping after life are not here. Death is only taken 
into the employ of goodness, and so it is made to serve where it used to 
reign. Captivity is taken captive by this cross. Through Christ’s death 
upon it, He had the power of death destroyed, visibly abolished. Nor 
after the sight of such a transaction as the death of Christ can we look 
upon death as the terrible monster he was before. He is tame before 
love, a slave that is given to wait upon the good and open the gates of 
victory and life before them. 

II. Again Christ, by His doctrine and by His ascension to the right 
hand of the Father, has opened to us another and a higher state of being, 
so that death is no more a realm of silence and detention, but a gate 
simply of transition. Death becomes twin brother of Hope, one opening 
to us the prospect of glory, the other opening the way. Nothing is so 
hopeful to the true Christian, nothing so inspiriting and animating as 
the scenes that are opened t ohis faith by our Saviour in the life to come. 
That only is true life to him, and death is but the entering into life. This 
life is transitional, questionable, that is life eternal. All that is gloomy, 
therefore, and dark and repulsive and terrible in death and the grave 
is overspread with light. Our faith looks above, beyond, — the evidence 
itself of things not seen and the substance of things hoped for. 

III. Besides, it is another proof of the abolishment of death by 
Christ, that what remains to be called death, namely, the cessation of 
the body, is shown to be only the closing or completing act of redemp- 
tion itself. The death we speak of is even called by an apostle the re- 
demption of the body, that unclothing which is needful to the full 
clothing upon, that putting off the earthly and corrupt which is needful 
to the putting on of the heavenly and the incorruptible. The process of 
spiritual redemption could not regenerate the body. The body would 
still be under death because of sin, though the spirit be life because of 
righteousness. Therefore death shall have it, but in having it shall only 
become an instrument of redemption. That which sin hath marred 
beyond mending shall be let go and replaced, and so mortality shall be 
swallowed up of life — so death is gain. In this view death is even seen 
to be converted under the gospel and transformed into a friendly power. 

IV. How different is Christianity when viewed in this light from all 
other known religions, how clearly eminent above them all. This is 
the only religion that has been able to grapple with death and bring it 
under mastery. Of no other can it be said that it has abolished, or even 
undertaken to abolish, death. If there be something of poetry in the 
notions of death that are offered in other religions, or something of 
philosophy, if they play gracefully about our imagination or ofter bold 
conceptions to our understanding, yet they are still only fungi that grow 
out of the body of death, yewtrees that are rooted in men’s graves. They 
belong to a world of death, they bring no power of life or deliverance. 
It may be something to a human creature with his immortal instincts to 
believe that he shall be a great hunter in the world of spirits, or that 
he shall drink wine from the skull of his enemy in the halls of Odin, or 
that he shall be ferried as a ghost underground across the Styx to the 


552 


FUNERAL SERMONS AND ADDRESSES 


Elysian Fields, paying due toll to the ghostly ferry-man; something 
that he shall live again on earth though it be as the soul of a beast, 
something to fall into Brahma and become a part of him, and be drugged 
with him in that delicious sleep from which he never wakes. But to be 
pure, a partaker of goodness and divinity even to the full, to rise out of 
the body as a being wholly glorious and immortal, and to have during 
all one’s life of faith on earth a new consciousness certified of this, and 
to live ever in prospect of an issue so triumphant, — this is Christianity 
abolishing death and bringing life and immortality to light. In this 
eminence of Christ, in this sublime adequacy to our want, is the truly 
divine authorship of his gospel most signally proved. 

Y. Neither let us overlook the comforts given to us here in our 
days of mourning and the sorrow by which we are afflicted in the death 
of our friends. If they lived in Christ they did not die, they have only 
emerged into a livelier life. What we call their death is death to us but 
no death to them. It was only their unclothing, their entering into life, 
their transition to the incorruptible where God abides in complete fulness 
of life. And if the consciousness of God is quickened also in you, how 
slender a space for grief and separation is left for death to occupy. 
There is, to us who believe, a light that pierces the grave and opens 
worlds beyond. We follow our friends who die, we see them entering 
into life, perfect, pure, separated from pain, decreptitude and all sin’s 
poisons. We see them emerging out of this world’s wants and tears 
into the fulness and complete liberty of just men made perfect. They 
are not in the grave, they are not hid from us. They are only a day’s 
journey ahead of us; we may see them now just passing the horizon of 
our day. We shall be with them tomorrow, all in life together. 

The life that Christ has given us we freely yield to Him. We tes- 
tify our faith in Him. We find our eternity in Him. We invite Him to 
reign within us by His all-renovating power, till we live in every member, 
We anticipate with confidence what our eyes cannot see, but what is 
most real to our faith, a state of purity with Him, and of youth and of 
glorified energy, fitly described only by the words Eternal Life. — Horace 
Bushnell, D. D. 


NOW HE IS DEAD, WHEREFORE SHOULD I FAST? 

CAN I BRING HIM BACK AGAIN? I SHALL 
GO TO HIM; BUT HE SHALL NOT 
RETURN TO ME.— 2 SAM. 12:23. 

JOHN WESLEY. 

The resolution of a wise and good man, just recovering the use of 
his reason and virtue, after the bitterness of soul he had tasted, from an 
hourly expectation of the death of a beloved son, is comprised in these 
few, but strong words. The reason of this strange alteration in his pro- 
ceedings, as it appeared to those who were ignorant of the principles 
upon which he acted, he here explains, with great brevity, but in the 


CHRISTIAN COMFORT; CONFIDENCE; RESIGNATION 553 


most beautiful language, strength of thought, and energy of expression: 
‘Now he is dead, wherefore should I fast? Can I bring him back again? 
I shall go to him; but he shall not return to me.’ 

I. The unprofitable and bad consequences, the sinful nature, of pro- 
fuse sorrowing for the dead, are easily deduced from the former part of 
his reflection. In the latter, we have the strongest motives to enforce 
our striving against it; — a remedy exactly suited to the disease; — a 
consideration, which, duly applied, will not fail, either to prevent this 
sorrow, or rescue us from this real misfortune. 

Grief, in general, is the parent of so much evil, and the occasion of 
so little good to mankind, that it may be justly wondered how it found 
a place in our nature. It was, indeed, of man’s own, not of God’s, crea- 
tion: Who may permit, but never was the author of evil The same hour 
gave birth to grief and sin, as the same moment will deliver us from both. 
For neither did exist before human nature was corrupted, nor will it con- 
tinue when that is restored to its ancient perfection. 

From the very nature of grief, which is an uneasiness in the mind 
on the apprehension of some present evil, it appears, that its arising in 
us, on any other occasion than that of sin, is entirely owing to our want 
of judgment. Are any of those accidents, in the language of men termed 
misfortunes, such as reproach, poverty, loss of life, or even friends, real 
evils? So far from it, that if we dare believe our Creator, they are often 
positive blessings. They all work together for our good. And our Lord 
accordingly commands us, even when the severest loss, that of our 
deputation, befals us, if it is in a good cause, as it must be our own 
fault if it be not, to ‘rejoice, and be exceeding glad.’ 

II. If any species of this unprofitable passion be more particularly 
useless than the rest, it is that which we feel when we sorrow for the 
dead. We destroy the health of our body, and impair the strength of our 
minds, and take no price for those invaluable blessings: We give up our 
present, without any prospect of future advantage; without any prob- 
ability of either recalling them hither or profiting them where they are. 
As it is an indifferent proof of our wisdom, it is still a worse of our 
affection for the dead. It is the property of envy, not of love, to repine 
at another’s happiness; to weep, because all tears are wiped from their 
eyes. Shall it disturb us, who call ourselves his friends, that a weary 
wanderer has, at length, come to his wished-for home? -Nay, weep we 
rather for ourselves, who still want that happiness; even to whom that 
rest appeareth yet in prospect. 

Against this fault, which is Inconsistent with those virtues, and 
therefore tacitly forbidden in the precepts that enjoin them, St. Paul 
warns us in express words: ‘I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, 
concerning them which are asleep; that ye sorrow not, even as others 
who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died, and rose again, 
even so them also who sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him: — Where- 
fore comfort another with these words (I Thess. 4:13-18.) And these, 
indeed, are the only words which can give lasting comfort to a spirit, 
whom such an occasion hath wounded. Why should I be so unreasonable, 
bo unkind, as to desire the return of a soul now in happiness to me; 


554 


FUNERAL SERMONS AND ADDRESSES 


to this habitation of sin and misery; since I know that the time will come, 
yea, is now at hand, when, in spite of the great gulf fixed between us. I 
shall take off these chains and go to him? 

What he was, I am both unable to paint in suitable colors, and 
unwilling to attempt it. Although the chief, at least the most common 
argument, for those labored encomiums on the dead, which for many 
years have so much prevailed among us, is, that there can be no sus- 
picion of flattery; yet we all know, that the pulpit, on those occasions, 
has been so frequently prostituted to those servile ends, that it i3 now 
no longer capable of serving them. Men take it for granted, that what 
is there said, are words of course; that the business of the speaker is 
to describe the beauty, not the likeness, of the picture; and so it be only 
well drawn, he cares not whom it resembles: In a word, that his busi- 
ness is to show his own wit, not the generosity of his friend, by giving 
him all the virtues he can think of. 

At the tearing asunder of the sacred bands, well may we allow with- 
out blame, some parting pangs: but the difficulty is, to put as speedy a 
period to them, as reason and religion command us. What can give us 
sufficient ease after that rupture, which has left such an aching void in 
our breasts? What, indeed, but the reflection already mentioned, which 
can never be inculcated too often, — that we are hastening to him our- 
selves; that, pass but a few years, perhaps hours, which will soon be 
over, and not only this, but all other desires will be satisfied; when we 
shall exchange the gaudy shadow of pleasure we have enjoyed, for 
sincere, substantial, untransitory happiness? 

If we are, at any time, in danger of being overcome by dwell- 
ing too long on the gloomy side of this prospect, to the giving us pain, 
the making us unfit for the duties and offices of life, impairing our facul- 
ties of body or mind, — which proceedings, as has been already shown, 
are both absurd, unprofitable, and sinful; let us immediately recur to 
the bright side, and reflect, with gratitude as well as humility, that our 
time passeth away like a shadow; and that, when we awake from this 
momentary dream, we shall then have a clearer view of the latter day, 
in which our Redeemer shall stand upon the earth: when this corruptible 
shall put on incorruption, and this mortal shall be clothed with immor- 
tality; and when we shall sing, with the united choirs of men and 
angels, “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” — 
— John Wesley. 


“THE LORD HATH TAKEN AWAY.”- JOB 1 :21. 

REV. JOSEPH H. CHANDLER. 

We mourn today a common loss. It means much more to some of us 
than to others; but none here are without some sense of bereavement. 
The house has not simply its vacant chair at the family table; we feel 
the absence in every room of a dear presence. There is a place in the 
family circle outside the house which henceforth will be unfilled. The 
little children will miss those offices of love which only a mother’s 


CHRISTIAN COMFORT; CONFIDENCE; RESIGNATION 


555 


mother can give. Even many who are not here today, whose homes 
perhaps are at some distance in the surrounding country and who mingle 
in our society only on the streets or in places of business, when they 
received the tidings which brought us here were moved by the sorrow 
which we feel because they knew that henceforth they must miss the 
presence of a gracious woman going in and out among us. And yet 
the things which give us cause for mourning, give us reason also for 
gratitude. “The Lord hath taken away” and we are sorrowful; but He 
could not have taken had He not first given; and our loss is only great 
because we have been greatly blessed. The incident of death changes 
our future for a little time, but it does not change the past. One has 
been given to us, and tarried long with us, every memory of whom is a 
joy. While death takes from us the immediate presence of our friends 
and so robs us of some joy, it also gives us something which we have not 
had before; it sets them before us in clearer light, and because we learn 
to know them better it increases our occasion for gratitude that their 
lives have been linked with ours. 

As citizens of this place we have great reason to rejoice that such 
a woman came here to make her home in early days. She came with 
rare gifts of person, mind, and heart into the wilderness. She was a 
brave pioneer. She never lost her high ideals. She helped to make this 
community what it could never have been without her. She has been 
an ideal inspiration to many young girls who have grown up here, and 
the high tone of our society is owing, more than we know, to her uncon- 
scious influence through many years. 

In the church circle she has always been an example of intelligent 
and faithful devotion to the Kingdom of Christ. Able to appreciate the 
best things in architecture, music and preaching, she has never turned 
away from the things possible in church life in the new community. 
She has never held herself aloof from the humblest services or the lowest 
offices of ministry in the church; nor has she allowed education or 
wealth to separate her in sympathy and communion from any of her 
neighbors or fellow members in the church in different circumstances. 

To those in distress she has been an intelligent friend, — never scat- 
tering alms to be seen of men, but daily doing little kindnesses for 
which a multitude of hearts bless her memory. 

She was singular for her devotion to everything to which she once 
gave her heart. From the first of her making this place her home she 
was devoted to its interests; she was always loyal to the church of 
her communion; she never forgot the friends who once gained her love. 

She kept daily interest not simply in those about her, but in otters 
whose lives had touched hers in past years. The friends who came here 
in early days were friends always; the former pastors of the church 
gone were not forgotten. Her friendships were such as to outlast 
death’s partings. She had a love which many waters could not quench. 
It was stronger than death. Can we believe that a heart that has loved 
so steadfastly is left desolate on the other shore? Some of her friends 
have gone before and what brings for a time sadness here must bring 
joy yonder. 


556 


FUNERAL SERMONS AND ADDRESSES 


We cannot stop the heartache nor dry the tears that come unhidden 
today. But even before the pain of separation is softened by the heal- 
ing touch of time, we may help ourselves to patience if not to gladness 
by remembering how much we have been blessed in these years in 
which she has been with us. And let me add this word, let not our grati- 
tude be hindered by vain repining because death came when it did. 
The Lord gave graciously, and in love and wisdom He has brought the 
end of one stage of life, and the beginning of another. Let us not be too 
much disturbed by death for what is it but a second birth? — Rev. Joseph 
H. Chandler. 


CHRISTIANITY A RELIGION OF COMFORT. 

PRESIDENT SAMUEL PLANTZ, D. D. 

“Let not your hearts be troubled.” — John 14:1. 

Life is by no means all sunshine, and cften I, is cloud and thunder- 
storm. Optimism is only a half truth. J*i spite of us we cannot always 
walk on the sunny side of the street. The ills of life are as real as its 
joys. Sorrow is as sure a factor in experience ?s peace. Homer com- 
plained that of all that lives and moves, nothing on earth is sadder than 
man. This may be an exaggeration, but it suggests a truth. Our existence 
is full of contradictions, and sorrow and death lurk along our track. The 
longest life, as far as this world is concerned, is brief. In the Hohen- 
zollern museum at Berlin the cradle in which Frederick the Great was 
rocked, stands by the side of the chair in which he died. There is no 
city that has so many inhabitants as the city of graves. In the Berlin 
picture gallery is a great painting entitled, “Der Zug des Todes.” It rep- 
resents a long procession passing over the hills, the end of which is lost 
in the distance. In that procession we see little children with locks of 
golden hair shining in the sun; young girls just blooming into woman- 
hood; the bride with her wedding veil; the business man in the full 
strength of mature years; the mother with her babe on her breast; the 
aged with wrinkled face and tottering on their staffs, and the apparently 
healthy and strong, and the sallow cheeked victims of disease; all are 
there, members of that endless procession, marching over the hills of 
time; and at its head, leading the line, is the skeleton form of Death, 
who rings his bell as he passes along. On the side of the road there are 
aged and decrepid ones imploring to be taken, but they are left; and 
there are the young and strong, shrinking back and asking to be left and 
they taken. “Pause and remember thy days, for they are numbered.” 

We are in a world where the lights go out; where friends and loved 
ones are constantly being called to swell Death’s great procession: and 
where we too in a few days or months or years must surrender to God 
the life which He has given. 

I. In a world of such transient experiences, in surroundings where 
grief and sorrow and pain and death ever enter, what can be said, what 
consolation can be given to keep the rainbow still in the sky, and drive 
away the dark visage of despair? Can philosophy comfort us? The 


CHRISTIAN COMFORT; CONFIDENCE; RESIGNATION 557 


ancient Stoics said yes, and a modern French philosopher has put forth 
the doctrine that by a correct philosophy one can conquer all the woes 
and ills of life. But experience shows that this is a very weak crutch to 
lean upon and that it gives way when trials and sorrows really come. 
Dr. Johnson in his Rasselas represents this, when he tells us of the 
young man who went to hear a philosopher speak and became infatuated 
with his doctrines. He taught him how he might subdue his passions 
and rise above all difficulties and trials. The youth thought he had 
Sound a true light shining in darkness. However the next day he went 
to hear his teacher discourse, but was not admitted; later when he was 
ushered into the philosopher’s presence he found him wringing his hands 
and wailing in deepest distress. “Why this grief,” asked Rasselas. “Oh,” 
said the teacher, “my only daughter, the light of my home and the com- 
fort of my old age is dead!” But certainly,” said Rasselas, “the phil- 
osophy which you eloquently descanted on yesterday, comforts you now?” 
“Oh, no,” cried the philosopher, “what can philosophy say to me now, 
except to show me that my condition is inevitable and incurable?” Ras- 
selas went to Imlac and told him what he had heard and he replied: 
“They preach like angels, but they live like men.” 

But how is it with the world’s religions other than our own? Have 
not they a balm for sorrow; cannot they give comfort and peace in the 
midst of the world’s sufferings, afflictions and ills? The greatest of these 
religions is Buddhism. Its founder, “The Light of Asia,” so called, spent 
his life pondering this problem of the world’s ill and built up his system 
to solve it. It was the sorrows of life which drove' him from home into 
the forest, and it was this problem to which he thought he saw the answer 
when under the sacred tree, he felt the struggle was over and the realm 
had come. And what was his solution We can find it in one of the stories 
told of the great teacher which stated that one day there came to him a 
woman, wailing and weeping, as she bore her dead child in her arms. 
She asked for help, for words of comfort. The Buddha told her to wipe 
her tears, and go to some home and get him a handful of mustard seed, 
and he would raise the child to life; but she must get the mustard seed 
from a home in which no sorrow, no trouble, no affliction had ever come. 
The woman left in gladness, and sought for the mustard seed. She found 
plenty of it, but found no home into which some affliction had not en- 
tered; and, at last, weary and in despair, she came back to the Buddha, 
already guessing his meaning, when he said to her: “My sister, endure! 
You have now seen that what has come to you is only the common ex- 
perience of man.” This is the wisest word the religions of the world 
can speak; endure, put your strength against the inevitable facts of ex- 
istence, callous your soul by resolution against life’s ills. 

II. In the Christian religion, however, there is a different solution 
to the problem of evil. Christ came to a burdened race that he might 
give it light and cheer. He healed broken hearts and set at liberty them 
that were bound. He put silver and golden linings in the dark clouds. 
He made a rainbow of hope and promise shine brightly in the sky. He 
taught the true meaning of suffering and of death. Those who have fully 
believed in Him, have, in all ages, found comfort and strength in the 


558 


FUNERAL SERMONS AND ADDRESSES 


darkest howrs of human experience, when the smart has been keenest 
and the burden heaviest to bear. They may have wept, but beneath the 
external manifestation of sorrow, there has been confidence and abiding 
peace. 

1. This comes first from the character of the God which Christianity 
teaches. It does not put behind human life a blind fate which holds us to 
its Ixion wheel. It does not give us a God lost in Nature, a great All of 
existence, without mind to know or heart to feel. It does not give us 
gods many, some of whom perhaps, when we are in need are in sleep or 
off on a journey. But it gives us a God immanent in the world, whose 
essential nature is love and who conducts his government in righteous- 
ness and truth. This God knows us all by name, he leads his flock like a 
shepherd, takes the lambs in his arms and folds them to his bosom. His 
name is Jehovah, the fellowship-God, who tabernacles with men, and 
whose ear is ever open to our cry. 

“O, wondrous story of deathless love! ^ 

Each child is dear to that heart above; 

He fights fcr mo when I cannot fight; 

He comfort : me in the gloom of night. 

He lifts the burden, for Ho is strong; 

He stills the sigh Lad awakens the song. 

The sorrows that bowed us down, he bears, 

And loves and pardons, because he cares.” 

"With such a God, one who loves us and means us good, one who has 
in His hands the rule of the world, we can be reconciled to the apparent 
contradiction of things, the pains and sorrows and heartaches that come 
to us, and say, “All things work together for good,” although we see and 
understand it not. 

2. But again, with our confidence in God’s wisdom and love, there 
goes the inner strengthening of His grace. Christianity is an inner, not 
an outer, life, one which is righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy 
Ghost, not prosperity, friends, pleasures. We can lose the latter and yet 
be confident and strong. Often there is a storm, without the wind 
rages, the thunder speaks, the lightning flashes in the sky, but within 
the home there is laughter, happiness and good will. So in the realm of 
man’s outer life there may be disappointment, sorrow, affliction, and yet 
we may have such a grasp of faith, such inner strengthening, such a con- 
sciousness of the presence of God’s grace, that we can say, “Thy will be 
done,” and see light and peace in the darkness of our day. Indeed, it 
is promised that as our day is, so shall our strength be, and that though 
the waters come up against us they shall not overflow us, and though 
we pass through the fire we shall not be burned. Did not Stephen’s face 
shine and did he not see the heavens open when the stones were pelting 
his body? Did not Paul sing in the inner prison when his back was lacer- 
ated by the scourge and his feet were made fast in the stocks? Did 
not the martyrs sing at the stake? And have not thousands and thou- 


CHRISTIAN COMFORT; CONFIDENCE; RESIGNATION 559 


sands of Christians in aH ages dried their tears as there has come to 
them the sweet consciousness that round about them were the everlast- 
ing arms? 

3. But besides what I have mentioned the Christian doctrine of 
immortality is a source of great comfort and consolation. We know that 
when our friends pass from us it is not like the emptying of a bottle 
in the sea. It is not like blowing out a candle. It is not like tearing up 
the flower by the roots. Death is only an illusion. God is not the anni- 
hilator, but the Creator. The soul lives and lives forever. Christ, the 
conqueror, carries the keys of death and the grave in his girdle. “We 
shall not sleep, hut we shall be changed.” If the house of our own earthly 
tabernacle be dissolved we have a building of God, a house not made 
with hands, eternal in the heavens. Moses and Elias appeared and com- 
muned with Christ upon the mount. Lazarus came forth from the tomb. 
The son of the widow of Nain rose from the bier. Jesus said, “Let not 
your hearts be troubled. Ye believe in me. In My Father’s house are 
many mansions. If it were not so I would have told you. I go to 
prepare a place for you, and if I go away I will come again and receive 
you unto myself.” Here is comfort fcr sorrow which no pagan religion 
nor human philosophy can give. In the light of it humanity has dried its 
tears. It has strengthened souls in the dying hour. A number of years 
ago, a sister-in-law of the writer, just maturing into womanhood, was 
stricken with disease. Her father. Dr. T. A. Goodwin, in his “Mode of 
Man’s Immortality,” has thus described the parting scene: “Calmly and 
patiently through months of intense suffering, she approached the final 
hour with many expressions of trust in God, which would have done 
honor to a war-worn veteran. The last day finally came after a night of 
indescribable pain: cold limbs, a failing pulse and difficult breathing 
all indicated the closing scene. Addressing her mother she said: ‘You 
will not have to watch with me tonight, for this poor suffering body will 
be at rest, but I shall be with the Saviour.” Shortly afterward, having ta- 
ken an affectionate farewell of the family, she reached out her hand, cold 
in death, as if to embrace someone unseen by the rest. With a smile of 
recognition she began to call by name departed members of the family, 
and others of her acquaintance who had died, adding after some minutes 
such greetings: ‘Here we are an unbroken family in heaven, washed 
in the blood of the Lamb. Washed, washed, washed!’ and in a few 
moments she was in the spirit world. Certainly “these Christians die 
well,” and they do so because they see before them a city that needs no 
light of the sun, for God is the light of it, and where all tears shall be 
wiped from their eyes. The hope of immortality is a comfort to those 
who are passing over, and it is comfort to those who remain, for they 
feel that in a brighter world, on some glad day, the broken ties will be 
reunited, and partings will no longer need to be said. The religion of 
Jesus is a religion for the dark day as well as the light. It gives us hope 
and strength and comfort as we make our way through this veil of tears. 
— President Samuel Plantz, D. D. 


560 


FUNERAL SERMONS AND ADDRESSES 


“SO HE GIVETH HIS BELOVED SLEEP.” — PSALM 127:2. 

ROBERT STUART McARTHUR, D. D. 

Thjese words are beautiful as a strain of music from a celestial 
choir. The language softens and sweetens death where it is introduced 
on the sacred page. Sleep is the twin-brother of death. The great drama- 
tist says, “After life’s fitful fever he sleeps well.” This language applies 
with absolute literality to the death of every true believer. Even the old 
heathen poets saw some likeness between death and sleep; but they 
described sleep as iron, as brazen, and not as coming in softness, gen- 
tleness and blissfulness as it is described in the New Testament. Homer 
said of one of his heroes: 

“He slept an iron sleep. 

Slain fighting for his country.” 

This is a very different sleep from that described by the Apostle 
Paul, and in the familiar hymn, “Asleep in Jesus.” Sleep implies an 
awakening. Thus, the term sleep suggests the doctrine of the resur- 
rection. The atheists who at the time of the French Revolution put on 
their tombs the words “Death is an eternal sleep,” were guilty of a 
gross rhetorical blunder, not to speak of their sin against truth and God. 
Their language was self-contradictory. They utterly stultified themselves 
as logicians. They were mere sciologists and not true scientists. If 
death be sleep, then death is not eternal. If death be sleep, then death 
is temporal. Then the night will end and the morning will come. Then 
the graves of our beloved dead will one day be empty, as was Joseph’s 
tomb from which our divine Lord rose in glorious triumph on the first 
blessed Easter morning. 

How divine is the blessing, when the awful monster Death, is trans- 
formed into the sweet messenger, Sleep! Then life is robbed of its 
gloom, and the grave becomes simply the dressing chamber in which we 
lay aside the garments of earth and put on the robes of heaven. Truth- 
ful as beautiful, and finally illustrative of the transformed meaning of 
death, are the soulful words of Elizabeth Barrett Browning: 

“Of all the thoughts of God that are 
Borne inward unto souls afar. 

Along the Psalmist’s music deep. 

Now tell me if that any is, 

For gift or grace surpassing this — 

He giveth His beloved sleep?” 

Comforting are these words of the poet and the psalmist when spoken 
in the rooms of our sick, and gloriously inspiring are they when uttered 
over the graves of our dead. With these words in our thought, we can, 
with the apostle Paul, triumphantly ask, “O death, where is thy sting?” 

We cannot too strongly emphasize the idea that the sleep of death is 
God’s personal gift. He gently closes the eye-lids; he graciously loosens 
the silver cord; He lovingly takes down the earthly house of this taber- 
nacle. “Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them 


CHRISTIAN COMFORT; CONFIDENCE; RESIGNATION 561 


that fear him.” Here the fatherly side of God’s nature is gloriously dis- 
played, but God is mother as well as father to those who trust Him. We 
have, therefore, in Isaiah 66:13, in the words, “As one whom his mother 
comforteth, so will I comfort you,” the picture of God as a mother bending 
over the cradle of a tired child, and soothing the little one to peaceful 
rest. The sleep of death occupies God’s thought, both as to the time and 
the manner of its coming. We read that, “Precious in the sight of the 
Lord is the death of his saints.” Death never comes as an accident; 
there are no accidents in God’s providence. No saint of God dies too 
soon; no saint of God lives too long. To God’s view there are no broken 
shafts in God’s acre. If we could see as God sees, we would do exactly 
as God does. Let us trust Him where we cannot trace Him. If we 
cannot now say, “Thy will be done,” let us patiently wait until our lips 
will joyously utter those words. The assurance that sleep is God’s per- 
sonal gift, takes much of the pain away from disease and takes all the 
dishonor away from death. God personally bestows the gift of sleep, 
the sleep of death, upon his beloved. God, with his own hand, rocks the 
cradle and puts His beloved to sleep. 

Then let us who are believers not fear the approach of death. Dry 
your tears, ye that mourn. Your departed are not dead, but sleep. A 
hand, gentler than that of wife or mother, is closing their eyes. A 
voice, sweeter than that of angels, whispers, “So, He giveth his beloved 
sleep.” And, above all these voices is that of our divine Lord and Sav- 
ior Himself, saying, “I go that I may awake them out of sleep.” The 
morning dawns; the cloudless day has come. All God’s beloved shall 
awake out of sleep; shall awake in His likeness; shall see Him face to 
face and shall be with Him in His own immediate presence. This is 
bliss unspeakable; this will be reunion inseparable; this will be glory 
indescribable. This is life without sleep and day without night. This 
is heaven. — Rev. Robert Stuart McArthur, D. D. 


















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